One of those rare books that I think is both fantasy and general fiction. It's so beautifully written, too - it would be so easy for a story like this to slide into melodrama, and yet the prose is so quiet, so lovely and contained, that the story is solidly anchored by it. Nor is that story graphically exploitative. The rape and murder of a young girl would be, in the hands of other authors, something grotesquely detailed, but Sebold sensibly shies away from that I think. That it happens at all is horrifying enough; we don't need to see every gory detail of Susie's final moments. Arguably, the detailed description is directed at another horrifying event - one just as affecting, and just as compelling. The fracture and dissolution of Susie's family, in the aftermath of her murder, is the real story here.

From the beginning readers know what happened to her, and know who did it, but how parents and siblings cope (or don't) and go on to find a way to live with their loss is its own long tragedy. That the murder of a child is not the end of that family is though, I think, another good choice on Sebold's part. There's no question that some families don't survive trauma like this. And why should they, it's a nightmare come to life. But that survival, and eventually even happiness, is still possible creates a memorial of a different sort, and one with value. That's a genuinely hopeful thing to read, despite the terribly sad journey it takes to get there.

I do think some aspects of the book aren't perhaps quite as strong as others - Ruth's story, and Ray's, for instance, aren't nearly as interesting to me as that of Lindsey or Abigail, but despite this it's still an excellent book. Four and a half stars, which I'm rounding up to five.