The Lovely Bones: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Susie says that when she first entered heaven, she thought that everyone around her saw exactly what she saw. She assumed that everyone’s heaven resembled the building of the local high school in Norristown, Fairfax High School. When Susie was alive, she says, she often made her father drive her past the building just so she could imagine herself as a student there. High school in Susie’s county starts in tenth grade, and by the middle of her ninth-grade year, when she was murdered, Susie could hardly think of anything but finally getting to go to high school. She imagined that she would go by the name “Suzanne,” that she would wear her hair feathered, that she would have a great body, and that her fellow students would “worship” her for her goodness and ability to handle anything that came her way.

Susie realizes after a few days in heaven that the shot-putters, soccer players, and other people or “students” milling about the buildings “[a]re all in their own version of heaven,” versions which just happen to fit with Susie’s version. On her third day in heaven, she meets her roommate, Holly. Holly is sitting on the swings, reading a book in an unrecognizable alphabet, which Susie believes to be Vietnamese. Holly, who had had an accent on Earth, wanted no accent in heaven, and so she has none. Holly reveals she has been in heaven for only three days—just like Susie. Holly asks Susie if she likes it in heaven, and Susie answers that she does not. Holly, sadly, agrees.

Franny, who is Susie and Holly’s intake counselor, guides them through their early days in heaven. Franny, in her mid-forties, is old enough to be the girls’ mothers, and Holly and Susie soon realize that Franny has been assigned to them because both of them miss their own mothers. On Earth, Franny had been a social worker for the homeless and destitute, and in heaven, her dream is to serve others and be rewarded only by gratitude. Franny, too, died horribly on earth, after being shot in the face by a man looking for his wife. On the fifth day, when Holly and Susie complain to Franny of their boredom, Franny tells the girls that all they have to do is desire something, understand why, and wait for it to come. Holly and Susie conjure for themselves a duplex which looks out onto a park.

As Susie begins to desire more and more, she realizes that what she really wants is to be allowed to grow up, and learn all the things she never was able to on earth. Susie tells Franny that she wants to live, but Franny tells Susie that’s not possible. Holly asks Franny if they can at least watch the living. Susie echoes Holly’s desire to watch “whole lives from beginning to end, to see how they did it [and] to know the secrets.” Franny tells the girls that even if they watch lives on Earth, they won’t experience them.

Susie and Holly set out to explore. Sometimes, Holly and Susie get separated when Holly goes to the part of her heaven that does not overlap with Susie’s, and though Susie misses her, it is an “odd sort of missing,” as Susie knows the meaning of forever now and understands that she will always see Holly again. As she wanders her heaven, Susie laments that she cannot have the thing she wants most: for Mr. Harvey to be dead, and for her to be alive. Nevertheless, Susie begins to believe that if she watches closely, and truly desires to, she can change the lives of those she has loved and left behind on Earth.

On December ninth, Jack Salmon, Susie’s father, takes a phone call from the police. The lead detective on the case, Len Fenerman, delivers horrible news: the police have found a body part. Jack asks the police if this means they’re certain that Susie is dead—Fenerman replies that “nothing is ever certain,” and this line is what Jack later repeats to Abigail when he shares the bad news. Abigail, Susie’s mother, has been providing the police with detailed descriptions of what Susie carried and wore the day she went missing, including her jangly charm bracelet. Abigail is the only one who knows the meaning of each charm, and why Susie liked them. As Susie watches Abigail deliver these small nuggets of information to the police, she is touched, but also knows how futile Abigail’s efforts are.

The next morning, Jack pours a bottle of scotch down the sink. Lindsey, Susie’s younger sister, asks him why. Jack confesses that he is afraid he will drink the scotch if he keeps it around. Lindsey asks Jack who he was on the phone with last night, and whether it was a cop. She asks Jack not to lie to her. Jack tells Lindsey that the police have found a body part belonging to Susie. Lindsey sits down at the kitchen table, and announces that she is going to be sick, but first she asks Jack to tell her what body part the police found. Jack puts a metal mixing bowl in front of Lindsey and tells her that a neighbor’s dog found Susie’s elbow. Lindsey immediately throws up into the bowl.

Later that morning, Susie watches as the police rope off the cornfield and begin their search. The bad weather has affected the landscape, but even so the police can see a patch of land that has obviously been recently disturbed. As the police begin digging, they grow frustrated with their inability to turn up a body; Susie, however, reveals that later the lab will find dense concentrations of her blood mixed with the dirt.

The Salmons remain at home during the search. Buckley, Susie’s four-year-old brother, is over at a friend’s house—his parents have told him that Susie is merely on an “extended sleepover” at her friend Clarissa’s. As Susie watches the police continue to dig, she grows frustrated that she cannot guide or help them. Eventually, a policeman raises his hand, and the other cops gather around him in a huddle to see what he has found. After a minute, Detective Fenerman breaks from the huddle and turns to the line of neighbors gathered at the edge of the police tape. He summons a woman who has a child in Susie’s school, and a junior officer leads her over to the other officer’s find.

Fenerman holds up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, and asks the woman if her child is reading it in school. She answers yes, and confirms that her child is in the ninth grade—Susie’s grade. The police cross-reference the woman’s knowledge of the ninth-grade syllabus with confirmation from Susie’s English teacher, Mrs. Dewitt, and then Fenerman calls Susie’s parents to tell them they believe they have found one of Susie’s schoolbooks. Though evidence is mounting, Jack and Abigail continue to explain away the policemen’s finds, refusing to believe that their daughter is dead.

Two days later, the police find Susie’s notes from biology class. Along with her class notes there is another piece of paper, the writing on it in another hand: Ray Singh’s. From heaven, Susie explains that Ray had written Susie a love note and tucked it into her notebook on the day she disappeared—she had never gotten to read it. Ray Singh becomes the first suspect in the case, though he has an alibi. Ray’s father teaches postcolonial history at the University of Pennsylvania, and on the day of Susie’s murder, had brought Ray along with him to one of his lectures, resulting in an absence from school which initially was seen as evidence of his guilt. After Ray’s presence at his father’s lecture is confirmed, his innocence is as well. Rumors continue to follow Ray throughout school, however, and he becomes something of an outcast.

Watching all of this madness makes Susie crazy. She is miserable not to be able to steer the police towards Mr. Harvey’s house, right down the street from her parents’ house. She watches as Mr. Harvey carves parts for a gothic dollhouse he is building, watches the news nonchalantly, and wears his own innocence “like a comfortable old coat.” Killing Susie has calmed the “riot” inside of him, and he follows the investigation blithely and without worry that he will ever be implicated.

On December 15th, Len Fenerman knocks on the Salmons’ front door. In the living room, he sits down with Jack, Lindsey, and Abigail and reveals that the police have found yet another personal item of Susie’s. He holds up a plastic evidence bag with Susie’s hat inside, and upon seeing it, something breaks inside Abigail—she had wanted to believe that Susie was still alive, but now she knows deep down that her daughter is dead. Len reveals that testing the fibers of the hat showed them to be covered in Susie’s saliva, and explains that this means that whoever accosted Susie had used the hat to gag her. Abigail tears the hat from Len’s hands, hunches herself over it, and sobs.

Jack leads Len to the door, where Len tells him that going forward, the police are now working under the assumption that Susie has been killed. Lindsey overhears this, but it is something that she has already known, on some level. Abigail, in the next room, begins to wail. Jack protests, saying that there can’t be a murder investigation without a body, but Len insists that all evidence points to Susie’s death. Len leaves, and Jack, unable to face Lindsey or Abigail, heads upstairs to find the family dog, Holiday. He buries his face in Holiday’s neck and allows himself to cry. At four that afternoon, after hours of moving through the house apart, Jack and Abigail finally end up in the same room. Abigail says the word “Mother,” and Jack nods his head. He then makes a phone call to Abigail’s mother, Grandma Lynn.

Susie watches as Lindsey sits alone in her room and works on numbing and “hardening” herself. Abigail tells Lindsey that she does not have to go to school for the last week before Christmas, but Lindsey chooses to anyway. In homeroom, Mrs. Dewitt, the English teacher, tells Lindsey that the principal wants to see her. Lindsey gathers her things as her classmates, all around her, whisper about her, and then heads to the principal’s office. Principal Caden tells Lindsey that he is sorry for her loss; Lindsey combatively asks what exactly her loss is. Mr. Caden sits beside Lindsey on the sofa in his office and tells her that he is available if she wants to talk about the loss. Lindsey petulantly pats her pockets and sweater, telling the principal that she wasn’t aware she had “lost” anything.

Mr. Caden tells Lindsey that she is the only Salmon girl now—she must carry on her sister’s legacy, and carve out her own as well. Mr. Caden tells Lindsey that Mr. Dewitt—Mrs. Dewitt’s husband—is coaching a girls’ soccer team in the spring, and asks Lindsey if she would be interested. Lindsey replies that she does not want to play soccer on a field twenty feet away from where her sister was murdered. Mr. Caden, flummoxed, apologizes again for Lindsey’s loss and excuses her from the office. That night, Susie watches as Lindsey does pushups, bicep curls, and breathing exercises alone in her room, focusing on nothing but her own breath.

Susie, in the main square of her heaven, watches from a gazebo—on Earth, she had always been jealous of a neighbor’s gazebo, and so in heaven she has her own. Susie looks down at her family’s kitchen, considering a drawing of Buckley’s which Abigail placed on the fridge just hours before Susie’ death: a thick blue line separating the air and the ground. Susie sees the line Buckley drew as a real place—an “Inbetween,” where heaven and Earth meet.

In heaven, Susie finds herself desiring simple things and receiving them right away. Susie loves dogs, and so her heaven becomes filled with every breed of dog imaginable. Holly and Susie have dresses in every shade, pattern, and length they desire, and at nights, they gather with the other residents of heaven and collectively play music in a kind of Evensong—a church service consisting of music, prayers, and songs.