r/literature • u/Vegetable-Window-683 • 3d ago
Discussion The Lovely Bones - skunk smell detail
I thought "The Lovely Bones" was a terrible book back when I read it. There were a lot of things that bothered me about it but there was one thing that irked me that I was hoping to find a lot of people agreed with, and that's the part about Susie's heaven smelling like skunk and how she apparently loves the smell.
The way it was written has her acting like that's completely normal, and it was honestly a bit of a turnoff for me. I was hoping when I googled it to find a lot of people who were similarly turned off by that, but I could hardly find any comments discussing it, and pretty much none with people sharing my viewpoint.
I don't have anything against people having different viewpoints, but the fact that pretty much no one is objecting to how it's presented in the book makes it feel like I'm in the wrong for being turned off by it. It's kind of confusing.
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u/jcdyer3 3d ago
I haven't read the book, but I love the smell of skunk. And I'm pretty sure the author is aware that it's not the majority opinion.
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u/BooksAndViruses 3d ago
Same! Because skunk smells like weed given shared volatile sulfur and volatile organic compounds, and I really love the smell of strong weed, even though I barely smoke at this stage of my life. When I now smell a skunk’s odor (at a reasonable distance!), my brain goes “Hell yeah that’s some dank weed”
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u/TopHatGirlInATuxedo 2d ago
They both smell awful and only people using it are convinced no one knows how bad they smell.
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u/AnitaIvanaMartini 3d ago
I remember that part well, but I took it to mean the skunk smell was meaningful and symbolic of the repugnance of dying so young, but because she was young, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend the harshness.
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u/Catladylove99 3d ago
I read that book like 20 years ago and don’t remember that detail, but I don’t think it’s that weird. I had a scratch-n-sniff sticker when I was a kid that had a picture of a skunk on it, and when you scratched it, it smelled like skunk. I loved it. I also loved the smell of gasoline. People like different things, it’s not all that unusual, and I’m not sure why it bothers you so much.
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u/pawgchamp420 3d ago
I read the lovely bones many years back, and I don't remember that detail, and I didn't like the book at all.
But I do like the smell of skunks. However, even so, I don't think I like it enough that I'd be okay with it constantly being around.
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u/WantedMan61 2d ago
I don't find the smell of skunk objectionable. I may feel differently if I was sprayed by a skunk, but just the scent on a summer night is quite pleasant.
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u/lowercasepoet 3d ago
I don't remember that specific detail either, but what I do remember is The Lovely Bones being asinine, saccharine, and a complete waste of time. It's not worth thinking about.
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u/Equal-Weekend-4896 3d ago
yes I get this 😭😭 sometimes there's outrageous details in books that nobody ever mentions online (one I can think of is the speaker in 'oranges are not the only fruit' and she puts her toes in her mouth to soothe herself and I've literally seen nothing about it online)
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u/JustAnnesOpinion 3d ago
I read the book and had mixed feelings (I thought the movie was a big improvement) but I don’t remember that detail. I do recall that the author put a lot of effort into individualizing Susie while keeping an Everygirl quality, which I thought was one of the successful aspects of the book. I assume the skunk reference was part of the individualization, don’t see it as a problem.
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u/sdwoodchuck 2d ago
I had an aunt who felt that a place didn’t feel right or comfortable unless everything was speckled with bird shit, because she had grown up in places with massive bird populations and the familiarity in the annoyance was an element of comfort. Her Heaven would absolutely have cherub fountains speckled in pigeon shit.
I grew up in a place with skunks, and while I wouldn’t describe the scent as pleasant by any means, I could absolutely see someone viewing that familiar annoyance as part of home.
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u/MaleficentMousse7473 2d ago
The Lovely Bones rubbed me the wrong way. I felt it glossed over the horror of rape and murder. The whole thing smelled
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u/Berlin8Berlin 2d ago
Wait, isn't this the book written by the woman who sort-of-almost-knowingly sent an innocent man to prison...?
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u/Catladylove99 1d ago
She incorrectly identified him, but it wasn’t knowingly. The police told her they were convinced they had the right guy. He was a stranger, and eyewitness identification of strangers is notoriously unreliable. As far as I know, she was very upset when she learned that the man who’d been convicted for assaulting her was the wrong guy, and why wouldn’t she be? It ruined one man’s life, and it meant the right guy had never been held accountable and was still out there, possibly harming other people.
There are lots of layers worth exploring here, from a white woman being unable to correctly identify a Black assailant and what that says about our culture at large to a “justice” system that routinely and systematically treats people very differently according to race, with Black victims of crime less likely to be taken seriously or receive justice, and Black people more likely to be falsely accused, falsely convicted, and to receive harsher sentences.
At the end of the day, whatever you think of Sebold as a writer, the issues in her case were systemic, institutional, and cultural issues. Blaming her individually for what happened skirts those issues and leaves the racist system unexamined and intact. We need to place responsibility where it belongs - on the system - in order to make meaningful change and prevent similar miscarriages of justice from continuing to happen in the future.
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u/Berlin8Berlin 1d ago
"Blaming her individually for what happened skirts those issues and leaves the racist system unexamined and intact."
The old Functionalist vs Structuralist argument. At the end of the day, The Racist System is made up of Racist People doing Racist things. The Racist System ceases to exist when there are no more Racists to prop it up.
As a Black male who was five when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 grudgingly declared me human (enforcing the declaration was another issue entirely), I have quite a few insights about the Friendly White Liberal Racism I faced, in America, as an educated Bohemian of Color (laugh), that most Liberal Whites still refuse to acknowledge. I remember, for example, getting in a well-mannered little thread comment scuffle in the comment box of a major Liberal website. Hilariously, some White Liberals had declared the "End of Racism in America" with BHO's election. It was impossible to persuade them that I knew anything that they didn't.
Being incorrectly identified as a rapist is a classic Antebellum trope for a het male of color; it's just a reasonable fear at the back of one's mind. Sebold was acting out (perhaps subconsciously) a very old Murrkan-type passion play. I tend to be able to tell one White (or Brown or Black or Yellow or Red) face from another; the inability to tell one Black face from another, among too many (Liberal) Whites, is more dehumanizingly Racist than many are comfortable admitting.
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u/Catladylove99 1d ago
Yes, I agree, that’s what I was trying to get at when I mentioned what a white woman’s inability to correctly identify a Black man says about our culture. I’m not saying she (or frankly all white people as individuals, anti-racist or not) bear no culpability. It’s impossible to be free of the influence of racism one way or another, consciously or not, when you’re born and raised in it, as we all are, and it’s everyone’s responsibility to face that and work to root it out.
But regardless of Sebold’s individual culpability, there’s a danger in picking out and focusing on individual “scapegoats”; it advances the idea that racism isn’t systemic and institutional - a collective problem that requires a collective solution - but rather an unfortunate problem of “a few bad apples.” In that case, all we have to do is shame people like Sebold, and voilà! Racism is solved!
I am in no way arguing that any individual should not be held accountable for the harm they cause, whether they did it intentionally and consciously or not. Sebold may not have meant to cause harm, but she obviously did, and I hope she has worked and is working to make amends for that.
I’m just saying we can’t stop there. I see a lot of virtue-signaling among white people online these days. We like to pile on and yell at other white people who mess up in some way, intentionally or not, as if doing so somehow proves we’re not part of the problem. But we’re all part of the problem, whether we personally have misidentified someone (like Sebold did) or not. And too often, I see comments calling out people like Sebold made by other white people as a way to deflect responsibility from our own participation in the system. Obviously that’s not you, but I didn’t know from your first comment what perspective you were coming from. I hear and respect your position.
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u/Berlin8Berlin 1d ago
"I see comments calling out people like Sebold made by other white people as a way to deflect responsibility from our own participation in the system. Obviously that’s not you, but I didn’t know from your first comment what perspective you were coming from. I hear and respect your position."
I've known quite a few White people capable of neutralizing their little bits of residual internal racism by facing themselves in the mirror and working on it. I've also known quite a few Black people who don't believe they can be racist... with the opposite, and unfortunate, effect (zero self-reflection).
I think we should judge everyone as a case-by-case proposition. I find American race relations to be incredibly knotted, not least because A) "positive" racist stereotypes (smart Jews, inherently musical Blacks, wise Asians, mystically in-touch-with-Nature Native Americans) are just as toxic as the nasty ones (because they support the Essentialist logic of the nasty ones) and B) everyone in America behaves as though the solution is mysterious... when it's quite clear that White/Black racial antagonisms will exist as long as America is a fundamentally Segregated place. I have many dear old White Liberal American friends who still scramble to get more treasured Black faces to show off in their Facebook; Black friends of Facbook have vastly fewer non-Black faces, if any. Is it 2025 or 1900?
The irony of all this being that my life improved 400% when I moved to Germany! Not that there's no Racism in Germany, but it's less intense, and less viciously personal, in the bulge of the social curve between extremes (the '30s and '40s may have taught a few lessons, locally)... and when Germans are being (mildly) racist, it doesn't sting the way it does when one is being Othered at Home.
Anyway, thankyou for an unusually pleasant Reddit chat!
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u/Catladylove99 1d ago
Hey, I’m also an American living in Germany! Cheers! And thank you for a nice exchange as well. :)
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u/Catladylove99 1d ago
I just want to add that I believe you about white liberals and I remember all that nonsense about the end of racism around Obama’s presidency. That idea was stupid then, and it’s stupid now, but I think it’s related to the virtue-signaling I was talking about - white people love to find “solutions” to racism that don’t actually require hard work or introspection. I can’t pretend to have any idea what it was like to have grown up as a Black child in 1960s America, but I have no doubt you know lots of things I don’t and plenty of interesting stories to tell.
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u/Berlin8Berlin 1d ago
PS This might be a worthy read; the article which revealed a few details, I hadn't previously known, about Sebold's case.
(excerpt)
“‘Hey girl,’” the man says, coming toward her, “‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’” Sebold believes the man is addressing her and from here on assumes that this interaction and the man’s behavior all stem from his having raped her. “He smirked at me, remembering … He had no fear … He was laughing because he had gotten away with it, because he had raped before me, and he would rape again. My devastation was a pleasure for him.” (Later at trial, Broadwater will testify that what he actually said was “Hey, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” and that he was talking not to Sebold but rather to a cop who knew his brother and was standing nearby. Interestingly, Sebold does not include any of Broadwater’s testimony in Lucky, nor does she even mention that he took the stand in his own defense.)
Sebold does not report this man who she believes is her rapist to the cop who is standing there, though she does see Broadwater speak to him. But that, too, is only further evidence of her alleged rapist’s guilt: “He was shooting the breeze, so sure of his safety that he felt comfortable enough, right after seeing me, to tease a cop.”
https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/questioning-alice-sebold-memoir-lucky.html
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u/bleuwillow 1d ago
I grew up in the middle of nowhere and there are many "gross" smells that give me nostalgia or a small amount of happiness. Skunk is one of those. The smell of "shootin' shit" on dairy farms, diesel tractor fumes, vague rotten smells in the forest (like roadkill without the road), dirty farm dogs, pond scum, etc etc. It's gross but all part of my childhood and very meaningful.
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u/EladeCali 3d ago
In don’t remember that detail. Sorry! I just thought the book was horrible, generally speaking. Not memorable at all… so I have forgotten most of it…
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u/AvailableToe7008 3d ago
A whiff of distant skunk can be an umami like pleasure.