Susie Salmon is the narrator and primary character of The Lovely Bones. She is a typical 14-year-old suburban girl who is interested in photography and teen magazines. Susie is raped and murdered at the beginning of the novel, and then narrates her experiences from the afterlife as she watches her friends and family attempt to move on after her death. Her presence in the afterlife gives her omniscience, which she uses to understand the thoughts and feelings of those on earth, as well as see back into their pasts.

Susie represents innocence lost and adulthood denied. When describing her rape and murder, she says it occurred back when things like that didn’t happen. Her personal experience is then mirrored socially as people realize that the suburbs are not the safe, calm locations they’re purported to be. Susie’s death denies her the experience of coming-of-age rituals, and while she experiences these vicariously through Lindsey, she struggles to accept that she will never get to experience them herself.

Prior to the start of the novel, Susie’s only intimate physical contact was a single kiss with Ray. Shortly after this, George Harvey rapes her—her only sexual encounter is bound up with violence, pain, and death.