The Almost Moon

My wife recently joined a book club. This is one of the books that was on the list. And me, being the curious sort, read it too. After all this science fiction and fantasy, it's nice to see how the other world lives. What do you read on the literary side of the fence?

It turns out you read Lifetime movies. This is the same author who wrote "The Lovely Bones", which apparently was some kind of phenomenon. I should not have started with her sophomore effort. This is a scatter-brained novel. It reminds me of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall", which is the short story we all had to read in literature class when we learned about modern American literature and stream-of-consciousness -- techniques which are no longer used at all. And there's a reason. It sucks. It's incoherent to read. It's repetitive. And it does not add value to the plot.

The story takes place over 24 hours, as a woman who's just mercy-killed her mother, who was suffering from dementia and agoraphobia and generally became a nutjob who was making everyone's life miserable. Then we follow her around as the makes even more poor life decisions, like having sex with the 30-year-old son of her best friend, calling her ex-husband up from two states away, running away from the cops, lying to them. And interspersed in all these scenes are unreliable glimpses from her past, like her dad hiding in the attic from her mother, her dad committing suicide (or did he?), and scenes that just prove her mom was a douchebag and deserved to die a long time ago. In fact, I don't think the world would be so bad off if a lot of the characters in the book died. Skip this one.

I struggled through this warbled tale, which sends the reader back and forth through time, confusing them with names of characters that are not well-defined enough for us to recall who the heck they were to begin with...None of the characters are sympathetic, so it's hard to really to connect or care about any of them. In a nutshell, not a good read, at all.

I'm not opposed to ambiguous, European-style endings, nor first-person narrative, but when the first person-narrative is told from the perspective of a character whose "self" is not much more than reactive emptiness, it makes for a too-flippant telling of what could have been a brilliant and quietly horrifying plotline. There's a reason that people with personality disorders make the rest of us squirm--it's because, when you dig below the surface; there's nothing there--nobody's home, no will to power outside of their attemts to control things beyond their control.

I guess Sebold did a good job of describing how a "real" person with Dependent Personality Disorder reacts. Trouble is, it doesn't translate well into any literary genre outside performance art or Abnormal Psych textbooks or YouTube videos warnings of how to identify and avoid such people. I'd like to have seen Sebold flesh out the story from the perspective of the other, less empty, characters in the story. Perhaps that wasn't possible in a 24 hour time frame--a time frame which I didn't mind at all.

And, whileI appreciate that the ending was ambiguous, this ending was more of a disappointment than it was fodder for thought. I've seen enough foreign films now to know that sometimes, an ambiguous ending tends to help the story stay with you longer, because you are always trying to finish the story. This story, however, just left me colder than it should have left me.

In Sebold's third book she is brave enough to write in the perspective of a killer. Not just a killer, but the main character is a very disturbed woman who comes from a dysfunctional family and murders her own mother. I feel that we should give credit where credit is due for this novel. Sebold did a complete 180 from her previous book, 'The Lovely Bones', this time making the killer the protagonist. Many of course do not like this book because of the subject matter. I've read other books with a similar premise that also received harsh reviews. If you are squeamish about reading a book where the murderer is the main character, then don't read it. Don't say it's a horrible novel because Sebold made an incredibly brave choice. Please read this novel for what is it, not for the subject matter. Look beyond the fact that Helen kills her mother and then does not feel remorse. Look at how Sebold wrote the book, the technique, the characters... and then judge it.

After saying all that, I didn't really like 'The Almost Moon'. (Half of you are laughing hysterically aren't you?) Not because of the subject! My speech wasn't for nothing. I feel that Sebold just... didn't write this well. It really could have been done better. The majority of the novel consists of flashbacks. Helen goes through daily life remembering things from the past. She hits her head on the top of the car door, it makes her remember the time her mother dropped her (Helen's) grandson on the floor. There are flashbacks within flashbacks. Helen looks at her father's old guns, which causes her to remember a time when her best friend's son was given one as a gift, which makes her remember that her father killed himself with a gun.

I understand Sebold's timeline, starting off with Helen murdering her mother and then the events afterwards. But, since it is so filled with flashbacks I almost feel like it would have been a better, epic novel if Sebold had written it like: Helen's life before, Helen kills her mom, and afterwards. To me it would have made more sense, made the murder more of a crescendo, and we'd understand why she murdered her mother in the first place (without finding out why through flashbacks).

Sebold writes of a dysfunctional family (kind of makes the real life family of Augusten Burroughs seem like WASPS). I felt like the relationships between the characters were realistic however. Their reactions of the murder fits in the way of their dysfunction.

So in the end I recommend this book to... others who like true crime. I know this isn't true crime at all, but I feel that lovers of true crime will appreciate 'The Almost Moon' more than most.

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

3 of 5

Helen Knightley has lived with a mother who was absent in mind and cruel in personality all of her life. Knowing her mother's life is coming to an end and this will be the final call Helen does not have the strength. She smothers her mother. In the next twenty-four hours Helen remembers her life with this mother and reevaluates her relationship with those around her.

Plot: Most of the novel is told in flashbacks of Helen's relationship with her mother and father while her relationship with her ex-husband and her children is wildly glossed over. Helen spends the entire novel blaming her mother for her mother's mental illness, for being an awful mother, and for Helen's absolute adoration of her. A bigger issue in this story would be Helen's father, but Helen only remembers him as perfect even when her memories are disturbing.

Characters: Helen wants you to feel sorry for her. People have gone through worse lives and come out stronger. She was entirely an enabler. Her ex-husband, Jake, seemed to have a connection to her that did not carry over through the story. He dropped everything to be at her side but once together the two fell flat. The two have two daughters, Emily and Sarah. Emily is never actually seen in present form in the book, only described in great detail, while Sarah is seen and almost described in less detail. Emily was perfect, Sarah was not, and that seemed to be the main intent to garner from this story. Clair, Helen's mother, was cruel in her old age and dementia, but the woman should have been treated years ago, and certainly after Helen's father died. Everything Helen did made her seem like less and less of a victim.

Easy prose make this novel a quick read. It is easily an in-between book for me. While I enjoyed it I would love to have had more answers to other questions or a deeper look at the years of Helen's life. She spent too much time trying to convince the reader why her mother was awful and less time trying to explain why so many people loved her unconditionally.

Four reasons to read this novel?

4. Despite the dark content, it is an easy read

3. If you liked Sebold's earlier novel, The Lovely Bones, you will appreciate it more

2. The story does do what it intends even while falling flat

1. Even if Helen is a whiner, the story itself is meant to make you wonder why and does just that

Four reasons not to read this novel?

4. No real character development

3. Too much glossing on memories that should have been explored

2. Obvious ending

1. Helen never has a happy moment, even in memory, even when thinking of the daughters she loves

I don't understand the negative reviews of this book at all. I love it. The main character makes lots of mistakes, which, for me, adds to the human/realistic aspect of the story. She's not perfect, and I winced several times while reading because I just couldn't believe the choices she (the main character) made. It was as if a friend was telling me her own personal story.

I read some other reviews that said they thought the characters were uninteresting, flat, and boring. I feel totally opposite. The characters are the kind of people I encounter in every-day life. They're quirky, unpredictable and a little bit crazy.

I read this book in less than 3 days. I just couldn't put it down.

What, no zero stars?

Listen, this is a dark read about an unrelatable moron who makes terrible choices. This would be ok if there was a payoff at the end (like redemption or consequences or lessons learned), but there is no resolution. It's like Ms. Sebold died and noone bothered to finished the novel before they sent to to the publisher.

The characters were not properly developed and I couldn't identify or relate to even one of them. This book was a chore to get through, and I even tried to just read the end to save myself time, but it didn't work.

Seriously, unless you are ready to go into this with the understanding that it is about multi-generational mental illness and would only make sense to a mentally ill person, don't waste your time or money.

This book was a waste of my time. I'm sorry I didn't get some hidden message, if there was one. I wanted to throw this book across the room when I was done with it. It's well written and all, just bleak and weird and goes nowhere.

I started The Almost Moon immediately after reading The Accidental Tourist so maybe it was too much mental illness in a row. That one was about a protagonist with OCD but at least was not the rambling wreck that I found this book to be. After forcing myself to read at least a hundred pages including the methodical murder of her mother and seduction of her best friend's son, I found myself asking if I would continue to read this one if I hadn't appreciated The Lovely Bones which was Siebold's best seller. Did I care about Helen at all? The answer was clearly no. So I quit reading it. I quit on a book about 1% of the time and read at least a book a week but forcing myself to read something that frankly, left me yearning for David Baldacci, Lisa Gardner, Michael Connelly or Tess Gerritson was beyond reasonable. Read at your own peril.

Alice Sebold seems to take on subjects a lot of writers won't, because she has a way of making them not a taboo but human and fascinating. 'The Almost Moon' begins with a woman in her 40's killing her elderly mother. Though it covers about 24 hours in time, the story bounces into the past here and there to fill us in on pieces of that past that tie into the story. It may sound simple, but I think it takes a lot of special talent from the writer to do it so seemingly easy as she does. I would encourage anyone that appreciates a good book to give this one a try. I can't wait to see what she turns out next.