The Lovely Bones

Published on February 3, 2010 by Edward Whitfield   ·   View Comments

My name is Alice Sebold and I was just 46 when my novel, The Lovely Bones, was murdered in February 2010.

On the day of my novel’s death I left my agent’s house around 9pm and cut across the cornfield that separated his place from mine. As I moved through the chilled gloom, dried corn husks crunching underfoot, a figure emerged from the frozen dank. I recognised him immediately.

It was Mr Jackson, the movie director. He’d made three films about jewellery which I’d never seen but my best friend Violet had enjoyed them. Adjusting the glasses that hung awkwardly across the bridge of his nose like a dead woman on the edge of a hotel bed, he spoke to me.

“Hey, you’re that Sebold girl, right?”

He knew my name.

“Hi, Mr Jackson. I’d like to stop and talk but I’m on my way home and I’m already late, so…”

“Wait a minute,” he said, his paunch catching the drool from his chapped lower lip, “You’re an author, right? Listen, we should talk. Do you want to see something I’ve made?”

I sensed something was wrong. Something in my constitution twisted and punched out, but Peter Jackson was a big movie director. He’d directed Braindead and Bad Taste and no one else had done that. I should have run right there, just dropped my typewriter and run for the car but I was frozen to the spot. Perhaps it was the chill.

A moment later he’d reached to the ground and revealed a trap door, previously hidden under a blanket of corn husks. He pulled it open, revealing a ladder which lead down into a small, cavernous pit. I stood at the top of the ladder, basking in the glow of the candles that lit the hideaway. I noted shelves adorned with Oscars and an old copy of my novel, The Lovely Bones. On a small table at the foot of the ladder there was a stool with a bottle of coke placed in the centre. It was mighty inviting.

“Come on Alice, down you come” he said, his tongue lubricated with what I first thought to be saliva but now know to be perversion. I followed. The glint from the candle light dancing against Oscar’s surface was hypnotic – alluring.

Now facing each other in the hide, I was invited to sit down and Jackson handed me the coke.

“I loved your novel Alice,” he said,” it was very pretty. I loved the way it was about things – grief, community, how the dead live on in memory. Adult things.”

“I’m glad you liked it Mr Jackson but I should be heading back now,” I tried but a frown sent ripples from his forehead to his bearded upper lip at the suggestion.

“Alice, I’ll come to the point. You’re not leaving just yet. You see I need you to sign this contract. It gives me your consent to film your book. Film it my way.”

“But Mr Jackson” I said, “the rights are owned by the publisher, you don’t need my permission.”

“But I want it” he replied, “I want it very badly.”

At this moment I felt fear for the first time.

“You will look after it though, won’t you? I said, desperation creeping into my voice, “You will stick to what I’ve written?”

He crouched down in front of me. His face was now just an inch or so from mine. I felt his breath against my skin. I smelt dry blood and bleach.

“Alice,” he said softly, “You’ve written a beautiful novel. A little whimsical perhaps but you’re a lady writer and that’s what lady writers do sometimes. I like the child murder, the heaven, the horror and the fantasy – it reminded me of my Heavenly Creatures, did you see that Alice?”

I shook my head.

“I love your story” he continued, “but you have to understand that as an Oscar winning director – more a showman than an artist I grant you, but nevertheless, I’m more attuned to what an audience wants than you. So whereas I love your story and I want to cannibalise it very much, I can’t just film it as you’ve written it, do you understand?”

I was shaking now. I tried not to cry. Tried not to show him how terrified I was. I didn’t understand anything he was saying. I was transfixed by the hate in his eyes. The lust.

“For one thing” he went on, ”your book starts with a rape and murder. That’s the hook and that’s what attracted me to it but I can’t put that in the movie. Not like that. I’m aiming for PG-13, Alice. So that’s gone. I’ll do the PG-13 version but not straight away. You follow me so far?”

I tried to nod my head but I was paralysed. My body wouldn’t respond to commands.

“Then there’s your use of flashbacks, this non-linear narrative. That’s fine Alice but what if the audience can’t wait to find out more about Susie and her family that way? Then what? I’ll have to straighten all that out.”

“But it acts as a dramatic counterpoint” I shouted, tugging at his milky stained shirt, “You get to know the life Susie had before…it’s a way of building a picture of her life throughout the book, you can’t-”

“ALICE!” He interrupted, “I’m the director. I know drama. We’ll put all of that at the beginning. There’s other problems too, Alice. Not your fault, nothing I can’t fix. You’ve put all this grief in the foreground with Susie constantly yapping in our ear – ‘I saw this’, ‘I remembered that’. Dull Alice, just dull – do you think an audience is going to watch people cry and cope and change over 2 hours? I liked her Heaven but I think it would work better as purgatory. That way she’s got something to achieve by the end of the movie – an arc. This stuff about the killer – I’m bringing that the front. Did you see that movie Disturbia? Yeah, sure you did. That’s the shit, Alice. That’s a plot an audience can understand.”

I couldn’t speak anymore. It was like there was a gag in my mouth.

“Your characters act like real people” he went on, “I need characters that act like movie characters. The heaven of your book is a happy place, an escape from life’s horrors. I’d prefer something which connected to points in the plot – it just works better. Also, I think the Father, Jack – he’s a complicated character so I’m going to need someone nuanced and capable of communicating grief convincingly. I’m gonna need Mark Wahlberg.”

The hide was full of sobbing now, my sobbing.

“Don’t worry Alice” he said, placing his hand on my breast, “my treatment might make the less credible aspects of your novel unbelievable but some special effects, a couple of thriller set pieces – no one will notice. Oh, and the ending will have to go. A possessed girl in the shower having sex with the dead girl’s first love? No one’s going to pay to see that honey.”

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Tags: alice sebold, Heavenly Creatures, mark wahlberg, peter jackson, The Lovely Bones

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