The Lovely Bones — Vocabulary
Alice Sebold
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And then, when they finally shivered to a halt, she gave up and focused only on getting off the plane.26 more

Smiling hard as our mother tried to focus her camera.26 more

In those days there was no security in the suburbs.9 more

My sister told herself that she was inside a series of rooms and spaces that, gone through methodically, might yield what she needed, provide her the trophy she could take home to our father, earning her freedom from me that way.1 more

I pushed and pushed against the unyielding borders of my heaven.1 more

They made his eyes perpetually bloodshot, and many people, my father among them, believed he had taken to drink.†4 more

She and my father played Monopoly, ignoring the more brutal squares for each other's sake.†4 more

Ruth had to be driven to the symposium because that morning, when the bus was leaving, she was still at home with an acute attack of gastritis.2 more

The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them.2 more

It was the sensation of being simultaneously resurrected and buried within the same breath.4 more

You're not implying ....†1 more

I had never even let myself yearn for Buckley, afraid he might see my image in a mirror or a bottle cap.†4 more

They seemed to be preoccupied, and he wished he could reach up and grab them and train them on the here and now.4 more

Sometimes I saw the wounded—those who had been beaten by husbands or raped by strangers, children raped by their fathers—and I would wish to intervene somehow.3 more

She had cut all her hair off and grown thinner in the intervening years, but it was her, sitting at the drafting board she used as a desk and reading a psychology book.3 more

The blush highlighted the hollows beneath her cheekbones ("The hollows that could stand some more hollowing," our grandmother pointed out).1 more

They smoked cigarettes and looked at each other as if they had suddenly and without preparation moved on to a new page, where the pressing business had already been highlighted for prompt attention.1 more

He had put me in the waxy cloth sack and thrown in the shaving cream and razor from the mud ledge, his book of sonnets, and finally the bloody knife.†4 more

The pragmatic, prim mistress that my mother had always been was gone.1 more

It had been like luscious food to this woman, and, as he listened to her tell him about her cats and her brother, who had three children, whom she loved, he pictured her sitting on the chair in his basement, dead.†1 more