The Almost Moon: A Novel
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel
Book Review: Why does "The Almost Moon" feel like a sledgehammer to the heart?
Summary: 3 Stars
On September 30, 2007, I posted an admiring review about Alice Sebold's first novel, "The Lovely Bones." That book was a literary sensation in 2002 and sold more than ten million copies worldwide.
Sebold was gracious about her success, but seemed a little baffled that millions would interpret it as a sentimental message of hope - because she herself, despite overcoming great personal adversity - isn't a born optimist. In "The Lovely Bones," she parsed violence without being graphic and explored relationships with a delicate hand. Her detached and deconstructive writing style - then and now - reminds me of the great Joan Didion.
Unfortunately, the success of "The Lovely Bones" works against Sebold in "The Almost Moon." I believe it will anger readers who made her first novel a blockbuster. The title refers to someone who's not all there - a celestial body in periods of darkness - hiding bits of itself to the naked eye. It's a story about things we hate about ourselves, things we go to great lengths to hide to meet society's demand to be "normal."
While "The Almost Moon" is a superbly crafted tale of madness, it's also a house of horrors better suited for readers used to the savage imagery of Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and David Lynch. It's as surreal and unpleasantly graphic as one of Francisco Goya's Black Paintings, a monster eating one's child. Unlike "The Lovely Bones" - which unfolded dreamy observations with subtlety - "The Almost Moon" arrives like a sledgehammer. It feels deliberate and unflinching, as if Sebold had no interest repeating the atmosphere that made her first novel a critical and commercial success.
Helen Knightly is an artist's model near 50. She murders her mother Clair - who has dementia - after Clair loses control of her bowels. (Sebold owns the template for writing dazzling openings too compelling to ignore, pulling you into a riptide that won't let go.)
But "The Almost Moon" quickly takes a sharp turn into the bizarre - and becomes an incessantly bleak novel of mental illness that leaves nothing to the imagination - sometimes in ways more disagreeable than shocking. However true it reflects the things we think about, it's one of the darkest works of 2007. Any non-crime novel that explores, for example, the swirling blood patterns left behind on a staircase wall from a man who falls after shooting himself - isn't aiming to be a breezy read during the holiday season.
During the next 24 hours, Helen Knightly feels liberated and caged. She succumbs to sexual and subjectively deviant impulses others might try to suppress. But she still has the presence of mind to annotate her behavior in ways which show she's no dummy. She washes and drags her mother's body to the basement. She has sex with the 30-ish son of her best friend, who's all sensuality and no substance. She thinks about Clair, her sarcastic, reclusive, once beautiful and now dead mother.
Helen recalls her dead father (loving and gentle but also mentally ill, who liked to carve wood into whimsical shapes). She thinks about her ex-husband Jake (supportive present-day accomplice), her two daughters (apparently normal), her art teacher pal (for whom she poses in classes as a model) and her neighbors (generically nosy and friendly). She thinks about her best friend Natalie (unhappy but in love with a construction worker) and Natalie's son Hamish, Helen's aforementioned one-night paramour.
Is Helen herself insane? Does she get away with murder? Without giving away the ending, we sense her fate can't be as bittersweet as Susie Salmon's in "The Lovely Bones." Life's cumulative disappointments and low self esteem prevents Helen from planning too far ahead or from expecting too much from the world. She's forever trapped in the muck of low expectations.
In sum, Alice Sebold remains a dazzling writer. She doesn't preach, hates sentimentalism and keeps her prose deceptively simple. She cares more about relationships - and the events which pull them in every direction - than about churning out a potboiler every two years. She's become a thinking person's horror writer, exploring the wreckage of dysfunctional people after hooking you with a stunning premise.
But by sticking to her guns, exploring the gory truths of mental illness, adding layers of misery to ensure Helen's story feels plausible - Sebold challenges the paying reader to enter a hell from which there may be no return.
Even if "The Almost Moon" is an accurate depiction of mental illness, I wonder if it really breaks new ground in a work of modern fiction. Ironically, the same uncompromising approach we admire about Sebold - makes her second novel too harrowing to recommend to everyone.
Book Review: The Almost Positive Review
Summary: 2 Stars
With nothing else to do but watch TV or go online on a weekday since I was sick, I ended up going over the rather haunting The Almost Moon, the second fictional piece by The Lovely Bones author, Alice Sebold.
I bought the book last week after recognizing who authored it. I was all praise for Sebold's first book so I wanted to see what her second book was about.
When it comes to deciding what rating I should give this book, I'm rather confused.
Plot-wise first, here's how the story unfolds: The main character (Helen) seems to be a dutiful daughter in that she looks after her elderly mother (Clair) who suffers from dementia. But as her mother loses control of her bowels and Helen doesn't know what to do, she suddenly gives in to a childhood impulse and decides to smother her mother and eventually kill her.
The rest of the book chronicles the relationship that Helen had with her mother, father, ex-husband and daughters, her job as a nude model for artists, and her friends. In the process of remembering the past, Helen slowly comes to terms with the present. In the process of recognizing her hatred for her mother, Helen discovers the kind of unique love she apparently does have for her.
On the one hand, I have to give props to Sebold for her extraordinary use of the English language. She has somehow mastered the art of weaving together words one normally wouldn't weave in the same sentence. She also has mastered the art of jumping from one time frame to another effortlessly. One would notice that practically every other paragraph is a jump from past (Helen recalling incidents in her childhood or early years as a wife and mother) to present.
Aside from this, Sebold's writing really makes you sit and pay attention, your breath catching in your throat as you wait and see what happens next. The first sentence alone, where Helen, in the first person says that she killed her mother, is enough to make you want to see what the book is about.
On the other hand, the book is too twisted and morbid for my own liking. I have read books in the past that tend to lean on the disturbing side, but to read a book about a woman who "casually" (I say this because it was an impulse at that moment for her to smother her mother with a towel) decides to kill her own mother is difficult.
Maybe it's because this book is a little too real for me. My own grandmother also suffers from dementia and some of the symptoms manifested by Clair are what my grandmother experiences as well.
Yet for the life of me, I cannot and will not ever imagine ending another person's life. Especially the life of a family member. You really have to be disturbed or mentally ill yourself to be able to do that. I just don't know if Helen has realized that she, too, might be equally as ill as her own mother but in a different way.
The book has too many plot holes that have no resolution. I have not understood the inner workings of Helen's brain as it is mostly full of illogic and absurdity. The things she does (i.e. cutting up her mother's braided hair after the murder and keeping it because she wanted to feel close to her) are questionable, almost unbelievable, and definitely unlikeable.
I like books that make me connect to the characters and when it comes to Helen (the entire book is really about her perspective), I never felt drawn to her in any way. The opposite happened when it came to digging deeper into Helen's character: I got turned off by her.
I see now why the general impression of people who've read and critiqued the book is that of disappointment; even disgust. It might be unfair to compare this work to that of The Lovely Bones, which, as people know, is the total opposite in terms of tonality (light, optimistic, charming).
Yet because of Bones, people expected Sebold's next fictional piece to be equally riveting, if not better. But for me, this wasn't the case.
Don't get me wrong, however. I still like Sebold as a writer though. Her experiences in the past have definitely strengthened her ability to understand people better and to write from the gut.
I just hope that if she does come out with a third book, she'll be able to wow everyone again and make them fall in love with her work. I'll still be one of those who anticipates what she comes up with.
Book Review: Flawed as its main character
Summary: 2 Stars
There are some impulses that, simply said, should never be acted upon. Unfortunately, people act upon them all too often. What allows a person to let go of their conscience and follow their dark desires? Helen Knightly should be able to tell you.
"Morality was just a security blanket that didn't exist. All of it, what I had done and what I was doing, was not leading me perilously toward the edge of a cliff. I had already jumped."
Helen might have started out as an ordinary child, but living with other-than-ordinary parents molded her into a supremely troubled adult. Her father took himself away frequently on what he called business, but often it had nothing to do with his job. And for as long as Helen can remember, her mother suffered from severe mental issues --- so severe that Helen felt like an outcast in their town. She learned to cope in strange ways.
Helen quietly went about daily living like most people. Then one day, she quits doing what is expected of her. When she does, she does it in a big way. She tumbles into an abyss of human tragedy and takes others down with her. One thoughtless, rash act sets in motion a series of events that rush to ruin not just Helen's family but others in her far-reaching grasp. At every intersecting point, one choice will take her to possible forgiveness; another, total devastation.
During the 24 hours that THE ALMOST MOON spans, Helen makes very few good choices. In fact, she makes such unbelievably bad choices --- one after another --- that it becomes hard to care about what happens to her. If she ever had a soul, it seems to have fled. Still, it is possible that one huge sacrifice on her part might put her back on the road to recovery, but she may yet be beyond salvation.
Certainly Helen's mother, Clair Knightly, sounds like a hard woman to love, although Helen says she does. She also claims to hate her. Helen wonders sometimes if her father, a gentle but essentially spineless man, died to escape his beautiful but unstable wife. Age never softened Clair. Her inveterate meanness persisted, assaulting her daughter with constant criticism and groundless derision. Clair was a woman incapable of being pleased. Yet Helen sacrificed her personal happiness to care for her mother. Whether out of guilt, a sense of duty or merely the strength of familial bond, even she may not understand her reasons. Her own failed marriage and strained relationships with her children probably stemmed from what ultimately tied her to her mother. The urge to be free must have been irresistible.
The line between a soul that is yet redeemable and one that is lost is fragile. Has Helen Knightly gone beyond the turning point? If not beyond, she certainly teeters on the brink. She spends one day after her awful deed indulging in retrospection. She rethinks her childhood, her marriage, her own motherhood, her friendships --- as if she's replaying her life in preparation for what she now faces. If she survives, she will face a burden worse than her abusive mother.
THE ALMOST MOON is as flawed as its main character. Had Alice Sebold chosen one conflict for Helen Knightly to resolve instead of allowing her to explode in many obscenely wrong directions, the result would have been more satisfying. As it is, Helen has too many problems converging in one day for her to adequately work out. With that caveat, this novel will keep you mesmerized, from the powerful opening sentence that will hit you like a blow to the chest to the stunning ending. And when you close the book for the final time, be prepared for a long night. Sleep will not come easily.
--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
Book Review: Good book but a hard read...
Summary: 4 Stars
Fans of Alice Sebold may not enjoy this deviation from her norm, but if you can treat "The Almost Moon" as its own entity in the face of such successes as "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones", then you may just enjoy it.
Half of the reviews out there are from people who hated it and called it a book "fans should stay away from" but if you enjoy her work, you should give this a try for yourself. Sebold has a fluid writing style that makes the story enjoyable to read, despite being about a very grim subject.
Sebold's main character, Helen Knightly, starts off the book by letting you know that she has just killed her mother, Clair. Helen was summoned to her mother's house, as she had been many times before, to assist her with the common everyday tasks of cleaning herself and changing her clothes. Helen then realizes suddenly that she is tired of the burden of her mother and ends her life.
What transpires throughout the book from then on are the events that occur over the following 24 hours since the incident, peppered with flashbacks from Helen's life as a child and beyond that help to flesh out a motive for why Helen did what she did.
Clair, as is told to us, was cold, mean and insane--the character being based on Sebold's own mother. Helen's father was tormented by his love for his hopeless wife and eventually ended his own life. Helen has no one to turn to as a child, except for her one and only friendly neighbor, Mr. Forrest. The rest of the neighborhood is intent on making the family move, due to an incident that occurs that showcases Clair's depth of insanity and lack of human connection.
Helen is now a divorced, middle aged woman with 2 grown children and a career as a nude model. In the wake of killing her mother, Helen sleeps with Hamish, the 30 year old son of her best friend for whom Helen feels a pang of guilt. She goes back and forth over how she has known him since he was a baby but some people sleep with people 20 years younger than them. But then, those people are not best friends with their lover's mother. This helps to add to her already messy situation and instability and causes her to question whatever shreds were left of her morality. And if things weren't bad enough, Helen's ex-husband, Jake, involuntarily ends up as an accomplice in Clair's murder.
If you have grown up in an environment similar to the one Helen grew up in, it is easy to relate to her but makes reading the book a bit more emotionally difficult at times. You find yourself actually hoping at certain points that Helen literally gets away with murder for all of the struggles her mother put her through.
But at the same time, you hope for justice, because you can understand how deeply disturbed her mother was and yet Helen killed her when she was at her most defenseless, being elderly and completely deranged. If Helen had already put up with the worst of what she was ever going to get, why would she kill her mother now when she had so few years left to live as it was? But then you can understand that someone as cold as Clair who is now so dependent on Helen could cause Helen's resentment to flare, in a "why should I now take care of her when she never took care of me?" kind of way.
Will Helen get away with murder? Ultimately, should she? Was her mother truly as terrible as she made her out to be or did Helen finally just reach her breaking point? Will there be a calm resolution to this horribly messy situation? Read "The Almost Moon" and find out!
Book Review: Is Helen The Almost Moon?
Summary: 3 Stars
The Almost Moon: A Novel by Alice Sebold pulls out all the stops and blurs the boundaries of morality and a normal life. Helen Knightley is a woman haunted by her past and her present, so much so that it drives her to do the unthinkable.
***Spoiler Alert***
While my friend Anna had read this book before me, I had forgotten much of what she told me until I came to the part where Helen smothers her elderly mother. I'm not telling you anything that you won't find out in the first chapter. The book is not about the events leading up to her mother's murder, but how Helen came to the conclusion that murder was the answer and how that answer was shaped by her childhood and her first marriage.
For me, the main problem I had with the novel was my inability to feel sorry for Helen. It's not that I didn't find her life hard as a child with an agoraphobic mother and a bipolar father, with suicidal tendencies; I guess the narration jumped around too much for me to delve deeper into the character's feelings and psyche. I always felt like Helen was keeping us just outside a wall that we were not allowed to jump over. I guess you could say I felt a bit like Hamish, her best friend's son and her lover. He says at one point in the book that he knows Helen has a good heart, but that she can be "so cold" sometimes. This is how I felt about Helen.
Her actions jump from murdering her mother to sleeping with her best friend's son, right after calling her ex-husband she hasn't spoken to in years to confess her crime. While I can see the connection between her murdering her mother and calling the one person she believed would understand her motivations, I was taken aback by the sudden sexual interlude between her and Hamish. Perhaps she was in shock, perhaps she was hoping the sex would release something pent up inside of her. I really cannot say.
The journey from leaving her mother in the basement to the discovery of her murder by the police is intertwined with childhood memories and memories of her marriage to Jake, the artist, painter, and sculptor. These are the scenes I enjoyed most. I was given a rare glimpse into Helen's life that shaped her current persona. It allowed me to garner a sense of her inner turmoil where her mother was concerned and how she always seemed to identify herself as on her father's side. The transition at the end from realizing that her father was not the victim but an enabler was fantastic. It was almost like it took Helen her entire life to realize the marriage and their problems at home were the result of two people in dire need of psychological assistance, not just her mother as she had always presumed.
And in a way, I wanted more of a resolution, not Helen's speculations on the matter. Was she going to escape or was she arrested and sent to prison for her mother's murder? These are the questions that still linger for me.
***End Spoiler Alert***
While her mother is referred to as The Almost Moon early on in the book, I came to believe it was Helen and her father that the phrase referred to most.
If you are looking for another Lucky or Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon is not it. This book made the commuting time on the bus and metro fly by, but the tail end of the book dragged for me. I think a few of the descriptive pages could have been cut out to make the ending more powerful for the character.