The Almost Moon: A Novel
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel
Book Review: Not Easy to Understand if Your Mom Baked You Cookies
Summary: 5 Stars
I was shocked to read that so many people were disappointed by this book but I suppose it is to be expected. Alice Sebold has proven thrice now that she understands the darker aspects of humanity in a profound and unique way. She understands that mother-daughter relationships are always complicated but when these relationships are complicated by mental illness, the water gets even murkier.
This book will likely be difficult to understand if you've never been close to someone suffering from mental illness or if your relationship with your parents was mostly a happy one. Sebold has a way of reaching out to those who have experienced loss and pain and difficult relationships and telling them "I know what it's like." This book profoundly touched me. Unlike those who have written so many poor reviews, I have to say that I DO empathize with Helen. I understand that she both loves her mother for her beautiful parts and out of sheer obligation and hates her for the baggage she left her and for the neglect she suffered because of her mother's illness. But this book isn't even about understanding why Helen killed her mother. It's about the insight we gain as we grow older that we are deeply and unavoidably shaped by our unending quest to be loved by our parents. When that love is withheld in any way or for any reason, we are left incomplete and constantly searching...an almost moon.
In sum, those who have little background for empathizing with Helen likely will not understand the book's message. Those who know what it's like to have true love and true hatred simultaneously for the same person will find this book perfectly in line with Sebold's moving, beautiful, poignant body of work.
Book Review: The depth of darkness and disappointment
Summary: 1 Stars
What an incredible disappointment this book was. I really loved The Lovely Bones and Lucky and, so, when The Almost Moon came to the bookstore shelves a few weeks ago, I grabbed it right up. Darkness is something that Sebold is obviously quite adept at exploring - as she did in both of her other books, one based on a true life experience. And, granted, Sebold is a good writer. She crafts a story using language that is, at times, almost edible. BUT the darkness in this book didn't appear - to me - to have any real direction or even a believable sense of groundedness. I read it, forcing myself to go on at times, skimming over many paragraphs and pages which appeared to be covered with (well-written) verbeage that had little, if anything, to do with whatever the plot of the book might have been. However, as I read the book, I spent more time than not waiting for something that truly made sense to happen - and waiting, waiting, waiting for when something would be revealed that would allow me to understand the passion with which the main character, Helen, hated, loved, and, finally, killed her mother. It was not there. Though insanity may have been what she was writing, it felt like the character hinged between sane and insane and there was nothing of strength in either regard.
In addition, there were too many times as I read when I thought, "What does this have to do with anything???" or "Was someone in so much of a rush to meet a deadline that they missed out on the last three revisions of this novel?" I think this could have been a really good book, but it was way too loose and, so, lost its focus and clarity as a result. A real disappointment.
Book Review: An Almost Story
Summary: 3 Stars
I wanted to like this book. I loved "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones" but this one didn't work for me. It probably would have made a good short story but there wasn't enough material here for a novel.
Helen Knightly kills her mother, Claire, in the opening chapter and spends the rest of the book explaining why. Her mother was mentally ill although not consistant in her madness. Claire is alternatively portrayed as a narcissist, a severe agoraphobic and a bi-polar with intense mood swings who lashes out at everyone verbally. Oh, and if you leave the linen closet unlocked she hides in it until she's covered with dust.
At some point this just got ridiculous. How could someone this messed up not be institutionalized? How can a severe agoraphobic leave the house to be treated for both breast and colon cancer? How could anyone leave a child in this woman's care? (Helen's Daddy was a wack job too, but in a nice way.)
Helen spends all her time recounting mommy's shortcomings but when every one of her friends says "You must be relieved she's gone", Helen wails, "But I loved her!" then goes right back to remembering what a trial her mother was.
I don't think the book is a total loss--there are people who would benefit from reading this. People who have an abusive parent of their own, for instance, but as a character, Helen is disappointing. Sebold's writing, as always, is beautiful but Helen could have walked away from this woman at anytime in her life, instead she turned herself into Claire's inabler. Even in death, she let's her mother run the show.
Book Review: Broken Lives
Summary: 5 Stars
Mental illness, and other serious disabilities, almost always have a profound effect upon families and the individuals that make up those families. The Almost Moon tells a story about one such individual, Helen Knightley, whose mother has suffered from severe agoraphobia all her life and as the novel commences is sliding rapidly into senile dementia. When Helen impulsively smothers her mother, who has just soiled herself and continues to snipe at her daughter while she attempts to clean her up, the severe repression that has always crippled Helen is violently ripped away. In the course of 24 harrowing hours, the truths of Helen's life and identity rush to the surface with almost unbearable clarity.
Sebold wrote The Almost Moon using a combination of stream of consciousness and memory. Readers who are not comfortable with novels based upon irrationality, and inner rather than overt forms of action, will probably dislike this novel. But mental illness is illogical. Watching Helen come to terms with what she has done, and why she has done it, is a slow, unpleasant process. But unlike those who found the ending of this book inconclusive, I found it to be clear and, well, logical. I think I know very well what is about to happen. I won't say more to avoid spoilers.
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon, are other titles that deal with mental illness in a way that seems more palatable to many readers. But, though I find myself in the minority here on Amazon, I enjoyed The Almost Moon as well, dark as it is. Life is not always sunny and warm.
Book Review: Can't Recommend
Summary: 2 Stars
The writing is good, and the story is compelling enough to stay with it til the end to find resolution; however, The Almost Moon doesn't deliver. The main character, Helen, who reveals in the first sentence that she has just killed her mother, remains highly unlikable and unsympathetic on nearly every page. Upon reading the last sentence, I asked myself, "What was the point?" Author, Alice Sebold, succeeds at painting three-dimensional characters and presents an interesting storyline, but this effort is no match to her first novel, The Lovely Bones.
This first person account includes the details of her mother's murder, and the aftermath, which is filled with wildly inappropriate and rather insane behavior. Helen goes back and forth in time, illustrating memories from her childhood as the daughter of mentally unstable parents--an agoraphobic mother and a long-suffering, suicidal father. It did, at times, lead me to examine my own relationships with my parents and my children, and one thought loomed large, which comes to Helen as she's posing nude for an art class the morning after she commits murder: "The idea that my mother was eternal like the moon. I wanted to laugh in my awkward pose at the inescapable nature of it. Dead or alive, a mother or the lack of a mother shaped one's whole life." This is the entire premise of the book, and unfortunately, the other 290 pages were a waste of time.
Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.