Master's thesis of Arts: In Heaven, as it is on Earth: Representations of literary heavens in contemporary literature, with a focus on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones

The key text chosen for this study is the contemporary American novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Whilst Sebold‟s first book Lucky was the autobiographical account of her own rape, The Lovely Bones is Sebold‟s first novel, and tells the fictional story of the rape and murder of fourteen year old Susie Salmon, in December 1973 on the eve of her high school career. Sebold‟s text is told in first person point of view by the main character Susie, who, having just been murdered, is able to watch her family and her killer from her own personalised heaven (in the company of other characters who also have their own personalised heaven, interwoven with that of the character, Susie).