The Almost Moon: A Novel
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel
Book Review: A Painful Novel to Read
Summary: 4 Stars
Alice Sebold is no stranger to violence and her writing reflects that fact. Sebold, who was raped at the end of her freshman year at Syracuse, bluntly told of that experience in Lucky (as in "lucky to be alive"), her 1999 non-fiction debut. A few years later she struck gold with an unlikely success about a brutally murdered fourteen-year-old girl who narrates her own story, including all the murder details, in The Lovely Bones. In both cases, Sebold was criticized by some readers and critics for being too explicit about the violence that characterizes her work.
So readers of The Almost Moon, Sebold's second novel, should know by now that she is not bashful about exposing the dark side of human nature and that, in the process, she pulls no punches. But she has outdone herself this time.
Helen Knightly admits in the book's opening sentence that killing her mother was easy. It was not something that she had planned to do that day but she finally reached a breaking point while struggling with the mechanics of cleaning up her 88-year-old dementia-suffering mother after she had soiled herself. It was easy, and she had no regrets about the murder or how nonchalantly she handled the body when it was over. She finally felt free of the mentally ill woman who had ruined her life and it seemed a wonder that it had taken her so long to reach this point.
After calling her ex-husband to confess what she had done and to ask for his help, Knightly spends the next 24 hours reflecting on her horrible childhood and trying to come up with a plan that will allow her to escape punishment for her crime. When she realizes that the police already consider her to be the prime suspect in her mother's murder she has to choose between surrendering, running, or taking her own life. None of the choices are simple, and she seriously considers them all.
The Almost Moon is a painful book to read, especially the first few chapters that detail the murder and immediate minutes following the crime. Many readers will consider, as I did, abandoning the book at some point during those early pages. But those who stay with it will be rewarded with an interesting look into the mind of Helen Knightly, the middle-aged product of the dysfunctional family that shaped her into the woman she is. Although she never becomes a sympathetic character, it does seem sad to see that Helen will not manage to escape her mother's influence. This realization, in fact, makes her wonder which of her own two adult daughters is most likely to succumb to the mental illness that seems to have cursed her family from one generation to the next.
This book is not for readers who demand and expect happy endings from their reading. This is life through the eyes of Alice Sebold. It is not pretty, but it is brutally honest.
Book Review: Heavy-gauge emotion written with powerful insight
Summary: 5 Stars
Although not as whimsically imaginative in conception as her previous novel, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold, with The Almost Moon, has created what is in almost every way a superior work: grim, honest, darkly funny, uncompromising, and as thorough an examination of a single character's psyche--and the poisonous effect that character's mindset has had on her family and other relationships--as you're likely to find in contemporary "art" fiction. (And make no mistake: this is an art novel.) I surely never came to like or even deeply sympathize with Helen, the middle-aged woman who smothers her aged, unpleasantly senile mother in the book's opening sequence, but I was extraordinarily interested in Helen from the outset, and only grew more interested as the book progressed. In Sebold's careful, often uncomfortably understated prose, Helen is rather like the pebble that's tossed into a pond, sending ripples to other parts of the water. To pursue the simile, this pebble is poison. It doesn't appear to be poison at first glance, and not even after a second glance, but those ripples are dangerous. Helen touches a lot of lives, and although she desperately wants to connect with other people, she refuses to make honest attempts to do so. I particularly applaud Sebold because, although the book establishes quite clearly that Helen's mother is a colossal pain in the rear, and that the dynamic between the mother and Helen's father was skewed, even demented, we are not asked to excuse Helen's act of murder. Her mother's mental state is not a capital crime. Helen committed a crime when she surrendered to a weak moment and coarsely ended a situation that surely would have resolved itself with time--that is, the mother would have died, sooner rather than later, of natural causes. Secondary characters are as vivid and as frequently ambiguous as Helen herself. I would not like to know many of these people--with their narrow minds, querelousness, emotional laziness, and easy opportunism--but they ring true because I have encountered their like many times over the years. Just as Sebold doesn't ask us to excuse Helen, she doesn't insist that we assume all people are moral ciphers, either. Helen's book- and music-loving neighbor, the quietly wonderful Mr. Forrest, is proof of that. There is the possibillity of reward and redemption in our lives; Helen doesn't find hers because she probably doesn't deserve them, but that doesn't make her any less intriguing. This is a major novel that, I regret to note, has exposed the timidity of many reviewers and everyday readers. They have to understand that Sebold doesn't want to shock us or enchant us or mollify us--she just wants us to confront the truth about one flawed, completely human woman.Book Review: A haunting tale of mother and daughter-a bit eccentric
Summary: 3 Stars
This book was definitely very different than I would have expected.
Helen Knightly has reached the end of her rope with her mentally disabled mother and having charge of her since she lost her father years ago when he killed himself. So it is one day that she decides to end it all and kills her mother by smothering her too death with a blanket, and then leaves her out on the porch at first. She then takes off after deciding to haul her mom down to the basement in the freezer, afraid of anyone finding out. Neighbors are calling to find out what is going on in there, and Helen does her best to put them off. Helen takes off then for her own home, but stops on the way to see her friend Natalie. Discovering Natalie is not there, but her young son is, another strange thing happens. Helen asks Hamish to have sex with her, and they do on the backseat of the car. He is half Helen's age, and yet, on the spur of the moment, the two are really going at it. I found this very odd after murdering her mother to do this. From there, she finally does go home, and rolls around the grass before going inside her house.
She becomes hysterical about her crime later, and calls her ex-husband Jake, to tell him about what she did. Jake agrees to come and help her get herself together, but only if she'll go to the police.
From there, the story takes many turns. The police suspect Helen after awhile, and she tries to make up stories the whole way through it which of course, don't add up. Her two daughters come home, and she does tell one of them alone that she killed grandma. After telling one of her daughters this-she takes off to escape someplace, not knowing for sure what to do.
The book goes back and forth between past and present, and tells about the mother unbalanced as she was her whole life, and in deep depression as well as agoraphobic and unable to function outside the house. When the mother did have to leave, she had to cover up totally so as not to see the outside world around her, for fear something would happen. She became this way after witnessing a terrible accident where one of the neighbor boys was tragically killed on his bicycle. It totally knocked her over the loop, and she was all the more disabled after that.
This was perhaps, one of the strangest books I have ever read. I had to find out what happened to Helen, so I kept on with it. It does become even more interesting as you read on in that you wonder what the outcome is going to be for Helen.
Book Review: A Harrowing Story About Mental Illness
Summary: 4 Stars
The story is about a mother-daughter dynamic that is diseased to the core; a dynamic that had gone on for 40 years and ended when the 50-year-old daughter killed her mother who was dying of dementia. The book is about what happens after the murder including flashbacks that span the duration of that dynamic with some anecdotes that will make your heart weep.
First off, this book is beautifully written. Alice Sebold has a penchant for making the bizarre and twisted lyrical and even ethereal. Her writing made reading this book tolerable. The story itself, however, had a different effect on me. It's very disturbing and heartbreaking. The first paragraph in the book goes as follows:
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother's core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had been beautiful when my father met her and still capable of love when I became their late0in0life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered."
Helen, the 50-year-old murderous protagonist, truly hated her mother, and loved her all in the same measure. As she lets the reader in on her most inner thoughts, reasons and memories, a heavy mental and emotional toll is taken and the heartbreak starts to mount.
One of the most disturbing scenes in this book starts with Claire, Helen's mother, letting teenage Helen fend for herself when a group of six men knock on their door and ask to speak to Claire about an incident that happened in the neighborhood a month back. The men were livid and wanted to hurt Claire, who was scared. Instead of not answering the door, she lets Helen handle the situation while she goes down to the basement and turns on the radio. One of the men ends up attacking Helen, all the while Claire in the basement listening to music.
Every anecdotal story that is recounted by Helen gives the reader more insight into the level of mental illness with which this family is afflicted. The sad part is that Helen is a mother of two adult women and a grandmother to boot. If the pathology is hereditary, which is what the book suggests, how will the rest of the family fare? You'll find out when you read this book, which is not a pleasant read, but it's a window into a world hardly discussed and characters hardly portrayed. For that alone, this is a worthwhile read.
Book Review: A complete book of almost folks
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps it's generational, but to me the family in this novel is marginally odd. The members, from Grandpa through Sarah, quarrel with life more than people I know. Maybe that's the exaggeration that makes the plot work. It isn't that their pith isn't real: it's that it's tinged bizarre. What else could explain the actions of our protagonist, Helen? Obviously her DNA primarily moves her, with a good dose of family "values" to round her out.
Having read the many criticisms about the plot, I reflected on the axiom: you can't go wrong with a happy ending. Any ending that is not tightly wrapped in good feelings, including poetic justice, runs the risk of supposedly disappointing a large portion of the readership. That said, for me, the plot was skillfully carried to a realistic end, considering the strange protagonist and her helpers. Re-read Helen's desultory asides. She wasn't a killer, but rather a person capable of crossing the border. And, while in this foreign space, of course she would tease us about her final act. With varied possibilities available, how would she attempt to cross back? In the simulated wording of critics: the plot is a trip to a previously unknown place, with perplexing adventures and an uncertain return---done fetchingly.
About themes, I just kept thinking about the present relevance of King Lear. Helen hating her Mommy never entered my mind. There is no good ageing. Without joint replacements, 65 is the new 64 1/2. And, at some future time, as a society, we'll have to debate the disturbing point at which a medically deferred death does not make a life; not unlike our continuing debate about when life begins. "Herself", the author, stirs us to consider the lingering problem, while facing the reality of prescription drugs becoming ever more efficacious. We can be thankful that, except for a few megalomaniacs of a century not long in the past, most of us don't relish playing God. Helen had thought about this very issue, frequently and in depth, and drew no conclusion, until the solution manifested itself in her plain sight.
A final point--- I marvel at Ms. Sebold's writing skill: fluid, easy, concise and replete with LOL dry humor. She must work very hard to make it look so easy.
The book is a good story, and, in the end, you just wish you could interview the writer. It's a work which took courage to write. The author herself crossed a border. 'Tis a good thing for us readers.