The Lovely Bones Book Club Chapter 12
by Erin
The night after Mr. Salmon attacks Clarissa he has surgery on his knee. Susie watches the surgery and stays with him until her sister comes to the hospital.
At the house, everyone is woken by police sirens. When they realize Mr. Salmon isn’t in the house, they know he’s out in the cornfield and that he’s the reason the police are there. They wait until the police call, and then Mrs. Salmon heads to the hospital. After she leaves, Lindsey calls Nate’s mom, then Hal (Samuel’s brother); Nate’s mom is to watch Buckley and Hal is phoned for a ride to the hospital. Lindsey sings to him while he sleeps. Len Fenerman meets Mrs. Salmon and they walk around the hospital. Len tells her Mr. Salmon attacked Clarissa because he thought she was George Harvey. They go outside to smoke, and talk about how Len’s wife death from suicide. They end up kissing.
Susie remembers being little with Lindsey, before Buckley was born, when her father came home early and recalls bath time with her mom and sister. They would take a bath and her mother would talk to them about Greek and Norse mythology, then tuck them into bed for a nap. But after her mother realized she was pregnant with Buckley, this tradition stopped and her mother changed. Susie couldn’t see it then, but realizes it now. Then she watches her mother and Len have sex against the outside wall of the hospital, her mother holding on to Len like he is a way out.
As Mrs. Salmon walks back to the room, Hal stops her to tell her Lindsey is in the room with her husband (Hal knows what she was doing with Len), and she comes back to reality. When she returns to the room she sees Lindsey holding Mr. Salmon’s hand and she knows that they had “become a piece”, and that she doesn’t have to be the emotional support for her husband anymore.
Quotes “When the dead are done with the living,’ Franny said to me, ‘the living can go on to other things.’
‘What about the dead?’ I asked. ‘Where do we go?’
She couldn’t answer me.”
Questions:What do you wish to discuss about this chapter?
What in this chapter stood out to you?
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