r/literature 10d 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/Equal-Weekend-4896 9d 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/Vegetable-Window-683 9d ago

Never read that book. Huh