Alice Sebold lives with her writer husband Glen David Gold and dogs in California. At the date of this writing, one cannot know whether she will be remembered as a flash-in-the-pan writer, whose debut novel

The Lovely Bones

(2002) was a much lauded, surprise bestseller, or if she has the gravitas to be heralded in the future as a dark portraitist of suburban American family life. In the deadpan quality of her writing, her biting humor and her attention to the painful dysfunctionality endemic to educated middle-class American families, her work is not unrelated to that of Jonathan Franzen.

Sebold grew up as a self-defined ‘weirdo’ in Paoli, Pennsylvania, the younger daughter of a Spanish professor father and a frustrated writer mother (McCrum). Her liberal arts education at the

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Citation: Olson, Greta. "Alice Sebold". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 February 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12912, accessed 19 March 2024.]

12912 Alice Sebold 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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