Murdered, She Wrote

My name was salmon, like the fish: first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Go ahead, read it again. Almost everything that makes The Lovely Bones the breakout fiction debut of the year — the sweetness, the humor, the kicky rhythm, the deadpan suburban gothic — is right there, packed into those first two lines, under pressure and waiting to explode.

Part coming-of-age tale, part mystery, part ghost story, Alice Sebold's first novel (she's also the author of a memoir, Lucky) is the tale of an ordinary girl who is raped,...