What was Alice Sebold's intention in writing "The Lovely Bones?"The story is about a girl telling her story of her death and how it feels to be in...

Alice Sebold’s intention on writing “The Lovely Bones” was to let the reader know that ordinary human connections are tricky and complicated, but it is exactly these connections that make us human. In today’s society we are losing our ability to build such relationships. The book is set in the 1970s when suburban developments were new. This was a time before media saturation, chain stores, malls, the internet, homogenized places. What it's meant is that everyone's become more detached from other human beings, sitting in their cars or at their computers. This novel is about a vanished place and time and the loss of childhood innocence. Yet, this novel recalls a time when relationships and connections were what made you who you are.

Sebold has been quoted as saying the book is about living an extraordinary ordinary life. In some ways, then, the messages that Susie teaches her family and which readers should take from the novel are that bad things, and they can be shattering, and as Susie says, "Horror on earth is real and it is every day." It never leaves you but, as Susie's father realizes, "You live in the face of it."