Lovely Bones

I read the book, "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold. This week I got to see Peter Jackson's portrayal of the same story in a movie. I was most interested in seeing how he pictured the afterlife. Susie, the girl in the story who has lovely bones, is killed. She hangs around instead of heading toward heaven. She watches her killer. She watches her father, mother, brother and sister. She is not in heaven and she is not in hell. What do you call the afterlife between heaven and hell? Purgatory? Peter Jackson's version is more clearly defined than the book and it is much like I pictured. Susie is in a space that has patches of heaven interspersed with patches of her old life and patches of dreams and patches of nightmares. Peter Jackson does a lot of close-ups in the movie. He focuses on fingers so close you can see the lines that make up their fingerprints. He did a great job recreating the 1970's - cars, clothes, hair styles, bell-bottom pants, furniture, and music. Fascinating movie, if you read the book you gotta see it. If you haven't read the book, it's worth seeing too.