The Almost Moon: A Novel
by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel
Book Review: Why is everyone so down on this book?!?
Summary: 4 Stars
I loved this book! I read it in two days. I was a little leery because of all the negative reviews but I am glad I read it in spite of all the bad feedback. This book is about love; a mother's love for her daughter, a father's love for his daughter, the daughter's love for each of her respective parents, the daughter's love for her own children, the ex-husband's love for the daughter, and the love for the daughter from her best friend's son. The relationships are beautiful and complex.
The reader has to understand that having a crazy mother (who is first agrophobic and later suffers from dementia) and a crazy father (who 'hurts' himself in his workshop and then goes away for three months to 'recover' and who later commits suicide in front of his wife) is bound to make the narrator crazy, too. It was only a matter of time before Helen snapped. It took her forty nine years, but she finally goes over the edge and kills her mother (a mercy killing no less) and then deals with it by having sex with her best friend's son and calling her ex-husband to be an accomplice. She is nuts! The view of the situation from Helen's crazy perspective is enlightening. You really feel sorry for her because she should have known that this was coming and now it's here and she can't quite get a handle on what to do.
I think anyone with aging parents can relate and understand the dilemma here. No one wants to watch a loved one suffer. This book is touching, sad, and a triumph. READ IT!
Book Review: Unlike Lovely Bones, Almost Moon does not connect
Summary: 2 Stars
Given that Sebold's earlier novel, The Lovely Bones, is one of my favourite books of all time, I was expecting big things from The Almost Moon. The new book begins with the same sort of gripping opening designed to shock the reader out of complacency... but from there, it falls down. Unlike Susie Salmon, whose brutal rape and murder inspires sympathy from the audience, Helen's cold-blooded murder of her own mother alienates the audience from the start.
Sebold spends the rest of the book, which spans the 24 hours following the murder, trying to explain and perhaps justify Helen's actions. Instead she manages to make her protagonist even more unlikeable, while creating sympathy for Helen's murdered mother and dead father.
Like The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon jumps around from present to past, relying on flash backs to tell part of the story. But unlike the other novel, it does not demonstrate any real character growth. Towards the end the story begins to become compelling, but then it end on a vague and unsatisfactory note.
At first, I thought maybe I did not like the story because I could not relate to a 50-year old daughter who had murdered her mother. But I do not think that is it: Sebold showed in The Lovely Bones she could make her audience relate to a 14-year old murdered rape victim, clearly she has it in her power to make us believe in Helen. But she was not able to do so, so The Almost Moon earns a measly 2.5 stars.
Book Review: I hated it!
Summary: 1 Stars
I am a big fan of Alice Sebold's other two books, "The Lovely Bones" and "Lucky," which are brilliant. I wish I could say the same for "The Almost Moon," but I can't. This is a TERRIBLE novel! It was literally painful to read. The premise of the book is interesting enough: Helen, a middle-aged woman, kills her elderly mother, Clair, when she grows sick of caring for her. Clair has tormented Helen and slowly sucked the life out of her every day of her entire life, and Helen finally has enough and smothers Clair with a towel. The book follows Helen's attempts to cover up the crime and flashes back to key moments from her childhood, when she was living under the care of two parents who were each abusive in their own way.
I expected to love this book, but I despised it. I could tell from the second page that it was going to suck, but I forced myself to plow through it in the hopes that a miracle would occur and I would find something redeeming within the book's pages. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I hated Helen's character, and it wasn't just because she killed her own mother. The things she did with Clair's corpse were absolutely ridiculous and disgusting, and her behavior directly following the murder was also completely unbelievable. This entire book is just way too bizarre and weird for my taste, and I was very put off by the whole thing. Do not even bother with it.
Book Review: A disappointed Alice Sebold fan
Summary: 2 Stars
I enjoyed both "Lucky" (nonfiction) and "Lovely Bones" (fiction) so much that I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read another book by Alice Sebold. Unfortunately, I found "the Almost Moon" lacking in character development, which didn't allow me to actually care about the protagonist very much. Certainly, some of the writing was touching. But, there were so many actions by the main character that required extraordinary forgiveness that the book became simply disturbing. It just doesn't work, in my opinion, because there are too many flaws and incidents of poor judgment to feel an association with the central character. I read through to the end and felt disappointed and disturbed. Too much was unrealistically inhumane, whereas, in Lovely Bones, the author managed to balance cruelty with humanity. In "the Almost Moon" this balance was never met. I do not agree with some of the reviewers who claim that readers are disappointed because they want hope or inspiration. My disappointment was in the character development. Everyone has flaws, but there must be something more to keep the reader interested in learning more. I do not think this book was appropriately edited and I fear that the author should have taken more time to improve the story. There have been numerous books written about characters with mental illnesses, personality struggles, and abusive pasts. This one simply doesn't work.Book Review: Painful. Necessary?
Summary: 3 Stars
It may have been necessary for Alice Sebold to write this novel. Whether the reader will find it necessary or not (I will not consider whether the reader will enjoy it; I do not think this book is one to be enjoyed by reader or writer) will most likely depend on the reader's biography.
Having said this, I must admit that if any reader could find /Almost Moon/ necessary, I probably should have been that reader. Like the book's narrator (and, as I understand, like Sebold herself), I had a mother who was mentally ill, and whose illness was her most important influence on my life. Like the narrator, my feelings for my mother ranged from love to pity to hate (and sometimes all in the same moment). And like the narrator's mother, my own mother became harder -- even impossible -- to love as she aged.
But perhaps because I did not remain a dutiful daughter to my mother, did not stick around to be needed and abused, I was able to follow the narrator only so far. Perhaps if I had kept my mother close to me, I would be able to sympathize not only with the Helen's devotion to her mother and the fury with which that devotion suddenly snaps, but with the bizarre action that follows.
I found, however, that I could enter imaginatively into the narrative only as far as the murder. Whether that is my failing or Alice Sebold's, I am not sure.