We don’t believe The Lovely Bones is on a certain language- or grammar-level. It actually varies quite a lot throughout the book.
Depending on where you are in the book, who speaks and what is currently happening, the text difficulty might change a lot. As diffrent people, with diffrent personalitys and ways of speaking are involved, the language varies.
But as the mayor part of the book consists of Susie’s descriptions of events, we might need to say something about the narrator’s language.
Well, some of us believe the language is too advanced to be used by a 14 year old girl. But then, Susie is a good girl…
Anyway, the language is not too difficult. It is written in American English, it has got some strange words, and mostly easy sentences. In most sentences it is possible to understand the meaning of them, although one does not fully understand all of the words. For example:
“A Xeroxed copy of one of Ruth’s drawings had been passed around in the library” (…)
In other sentences, the words are easy to understand by themselves, but together they make up something more complex. For example:
"You have to be able to look past the dead.”
Well, that’s it…
You are absolutely right in that some sentences are complex due to other factors besides the actual words/grammar; the author makes use of a number of meatphors, for instance.
SvaraRadera-Please remind me to come back on Susie being the narrator after you've all finished the book!