The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold

book data

6,150 ratings, 2.52 average rating, 1,935 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		4%
4		14%
3		30%
2		27%
1		22%

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published

October 16th 2007 by Little, Brown and Company

binding

Hardcover, 304 pages

isbn

0316677469 (isbn13: 9780316677462)

description

A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky....more

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01/24/08

Kendra rated it:

bookshelves: jumped-ship

Read in February, 2008

I wanted to believe that the backlash against this book could be explained by general disappointment about Sebold's second novel not living up to The Lovely Bones. Um, yeah. Not only did it not measure up, but I don't even want this book in the same ROOM with my other books. It really and truly is that bad. I tried, people. I tried. But when I spent 4 hours on a plane learning how to do Sodoku just so I wouldn't have to read one more heinous word of this novel, I knew that I was going to h...more

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6 comments

11/13/07

Angela rated it:

Read in November, 2007

I was so hoping to like this book. I loved the beginning of "The Lovely Bones" and was hoping Sebold could keep it up through an entire novel. Unfortunately, on page 44, I read the worst line I have ever encountered in literature. I finished the book but never got over that awful, awful line. I have no idea if this is a good book or not. I only know it contains the most disturbing sentence ever written.

I am going to quote the sentence. Let's call it a public service....more

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8 comments

04/24/08

Rita rated it:

bookshelves: hated, most-recent

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Spoilers...

The subject matter was hard at the start, but it got easier as the book progressed, because I started to really dislike the main character.

Yes, I understand and appreciate the dichotomy of the mother/daughter relationship, especially a dysfunctional one. I get the love/hate thing. I really, really do. But, the fact that she owned her hatred of her mother at such an early age--she acknowledged it and expressed it, I mean she OWNED it, but then she only acted out...more Spoilers...

The subject matter was hard at the start, but it got easier as the book progressed, because I started to really dislike the main character.

Yes, I understand and appreciate the dichotomy of the mother/daughter relationship, especially a dysfunctional one. I get the love/hate thing. I really, really do. But, the fact that she owned her hatred of her mother at such an early age--she acknowledged it and expressed it, I mean she OWNED it, but then she only acted out the "loving daughter" part, was so disingenuous. But, if we're to accept that this is who that character was, then she was just weak and sick. And continued to be weak and sick, all through her marriage, hurting her husband and her children all while openly hating the mother that she insisted on caring for, and then finally killing that mother. The character was 49 at the time of the story, and in all those years, from the first spark of hatred of her mother when she was little, did she ever think that this was all unhealthy and wrong? She was closed off, cold, cruel, pushing everyone away, even her children (which I found so hard to read, that she went on and on about her dislike of her older child) and never had any inkling to change? Oh, she saw the one therapist once, who was apparently just as nuts as she was, and talked about her hostility towards his "probing." It was all just too weird to accept.

Then her having sex with her best friend's son was even more hard to stomach than her killing her mother. I mean, that feels almost incestuous, doesn't it? The son was grown, and apparently had a crush on this woman for a long time, but still, I don't understand how you can have sex with someone who is the child of your best friend. Someone you've had an adult role in raising since birth. It was, as I said, worse than the murder she'd just committed, IMO. After I realized that I truly did not like this woman, anything about her, it was even harder to plod through her narcissism over her figure (realizing that if she had not taken such good care of her figure she wouldn't have had the strength to murder her mother, nor be attractive to her friend's son--oh GAG me!--and her going on and on about how plump her friend was, in a not-nice way--again, who is SHE to put down anyone!?!)

See, the book wasn't presented as maybe the diary of Charles Manson would be, like it's supposed to be a spectacle of horrors, hard to get through because that level of sickness is just so out of our understanding. It was presented kind of like we were supposed to maybe sympathize with her and root for her. I think she was supposed to come across as weak and having made bad decisions, but "damaged" by her upbringing. I think we were supposed to recognize that she made bad choices, but also feel compassion for her because of what she'd gone through, and her conflicting emotions. I didn't though. At first I did. But, then the stuff with the friend's son came in and the stuff about the kind of mother she was, and that she just never even tried to stop wallowing in her own illness. I just thought she was selfish and a horrible person.

The end was mildly redeeming. Yes, she was going to take responsibility for it, finally, and try to repair her broken relationships (from prison, or a mental institution, more likely). But, it was too little too late.

What I truly hated about the book was that it is the opposite of what I like and what I hope to achieve in my own writing. I am all about stories of people who come from sickness and bad luck and through whatever (the unexpected love from others, their own strength, some luck that graces them, assistance from doctors, teachers, mentors), they are able to get out of the muck and make something of themselves. I'm not even talking big success stories like The Persuit of Happyness. Even just little ones like Dead Poets Society, where the big prize is having the courage to ask out a girl, or tell your parents you don't want to be a lawyer. Just to get over the negative weight and live a normal life. I am all about stories of rising above whatever handicaps you were born with or dealt early on. I like to see stories where people were born "freaks" and then somehow normalized that title, made it work FOR them, taking what they've been given and gaining strength from it.

This was the opposite of that. This took a person, put her in a bad situation (yes, her childhood was bad, but it wasn't the worst I've seen by any measure) and then held her head under its water until she drowned in it. It took what could have been a quirky person from a less-than-ideal upbringing, spun her around and turned her into a freak, instead of taking a person out of a horrible place and turning her into a hero. I just don't like those kinds of books, I guess. I just had a really, really hard time with this woman's lifetime of submission to weakness and selfishness and felt that there shouldn't even be a book written about this kind of person unless it is clearly stated that we are supposed to genuinely dislike her. And, well, I genuinely dislike plenty of selfish and weak people who have done real-life bad things to me and others, so I just don't want to invest my recreation time to it, too.

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10/31/07

Ukrainer rated it:

Read in October, 2007

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones is a disappointing and overrated book. Imagine my pleasure and delight (I always like to feel justified) when I read several reviews (The New York Times Sunday Book Review and USA Today) absolutely trashing her latest book The Almost Moon. However, Almost Moon sounded so bad that I just had to find out how bad it is for myself.

First, do not read this book. The protagonist (if I dare use that word), Helen, kills her...more

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11/25/07

Anne rated it:

Read in November, 2007

In 2003, my brother bought me Alice Sebold's first novel, The Lovely Bones, for Christmas. I was into it from the first page, and I couldn't help crying my eyes out. Later, I read her memoir, Lucky. I didn't think it was quite as well done, but it was about a very powerful topic, and it gave me some respect for where Sebold had come from and how much she had overcome. So, I eagerly anticipated getting this one from the long library waiting list. The Almost Moon tackles the difficult subject of...more

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01/11/08

Rhian rated it:

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Bad in every way: terrible sentences, dreadful unbelievable characters, boring story. Includes this line, "This was not the first time I had been face-to-face with my mother's genitalia." Her genitalia has a FACE!!!! Downhill from there.

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01/24/08

Jason Pettus rated it:

Read in January, 2008

(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

I freely admit it; that as a man, there are sometimes things that women do that utterly baffle me, and will probably continue to baffle me until the day I freaking die, just like it is with women regarding men. And that's because, avoiding any kind of qualitative judgment, I think we can all agree that there ...more (My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

I freely admit it; that as a man, there are sometimes things that women do that utterly baffle me, and will probably continue to baffle me until the day I freaking die, just like it is with women regarding men. And that's because, avoiding any kind of qualitative judgment, I think we can all agree that there are fundamentally different ways that men and women sometimes react in different situations, based on a variety of criteria and societal concerns, and that in some cases such actions and behaviors can seem incomprehensible to the other gender. You don't hear of too many men, for example, who just lose their marbles one day, drive their kids to a nearby lake and calmly drown them; not too many male jilted lovers go on insane cross-country drives in the middle of the night, with bizarre weapons in tow and while wearing adult diapers so that they don't have to make bathroom breaks, all in the name of some crazed crackpot scheme thought up in the middle of the night regarding stabbing their lover's new lover then turning the knife on themselves.

It is one of these very topics, in fact, that fuels the entire storyline of acclaimed author Alice Sebold's latest brilliantly twisted dark little novel, The Almost Moon; in fact, that's what the very first chapter of the book is devoted to, is a real-time blow-by-blow accounting of a middle-aged woman suddenly going insane one day and murdering her senile, sh-t-covered old-age mother, just randomly one afternoon while over at her house and preparing to clean her like a baby for the thousandth time in a row now. What the rest of this delightfully wicked story is about, then, is a fascinating and detailed look at the decades leading up to this moment, told in a non-narrative "hyperfiction" style that jumps from early-childhood to just yesterday at the blink of an eye, painting one of the deepest portraits you'll see in contemporary literature of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship, and of all the teeny, tiny, strange, entertaining, depressing, hopeless, fascinating ways the relationship affects the way the woman deals with each and every other person in her life too. It is utterly a female story, the kind that can only be told by a female author, but told in a way so that I as a male reader can get it too; I love such novels, as I've mentioned here before, and am always glad to come upon another one like I have this week.

So why does Sebold's name sound so familiar, you're thinking? Well, because she's the mousy dark novelist who seemingly appeared out of nowhere in the early 2000s to write The Lovely Bones, an emotionally devastating crime thriller and meditation on loss that happened to have been written from the standpoint of a murdered teenage girl as she watches the proceedings from heaven. I read it too when it first came out, and like many others it made me openly weep in public; it became not only a runaway bestseller, but is also slated to be the next movie by Lord of the Rings impresario Peter Jackson. Oh yeah, that Alice Sebold!

This is only her second novel, after taking a break between them to pen the true rape memoir Lucky; and it is the best kind of second novel to write, to tell you the truth, one that...(less)

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10/27/07

Caroline rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, read-in-2007

Read in November, 2007

This was just not worth the effort it took to get through it, at all. I could have gotten over the main character murdering her mother (which is within the first sentence, so don't panic about being spoiled) if she weren't so unpleasant in every other respect. First she murders her mother, and then she goes on to do other things that are just as cringe-worthy.

I also could have gotten past how horrible a person Helen was...if they novel had any kind of point at all. I kept reading in ...more

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12/05/07

Ann rated it:

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Any Fiction Lover

When I read The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s bestselling first novel, I thought, now what? What does an author write after that? How could she possibly top this novel?

Three short years later Alice follows with a realistic, maybe too real, new novel, The Almost Moon, that promises to ease its way up the bestseller list in a short time. In what seems to be Ms. Sebold’s tradition, The Almost Moon is a dark tale, not a cozy quick read. This story voices some of the worst emotions an...more When I read The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s bestselling first novel, I thought, now what? What does an author write after that? How could she possibly top this novel?

Three short years later Alice follows with a realistic, maybe too real, new novel, The Almost Moon, that promises to ease its way up the bestseller list in a short time. In what seems to be Ms. Sebold’s tradition, The Almost Moon is a dark tale, not a cozy quick read. This story voices some of the worst emotions and fears one could imagine.

Helen Knightly, a middle-aged woman looking after her elderly mother, commits an act that most could not fathom. In the first sentence of the book, Helen tells the reader in her casual voice—as if she were a friend—that killing her mother came easily. This personal point of view sets the tone of the story and somewhat prepares readers for the emotional ride to come. The book only covers a twenty-four-hour period, but because of the way the story is told readers will hardly notice. I must applaud Ms. Sebold for the courage to tackle emotions and thoughts that readers will not want to identify with and a subject that will surely generate plenty of criticism.

The intricate relationship Ms. Sebold weaves between mother and daughter brings to the surface what most families fight to bury in their histories. The unhealthy bond between Helen and her mother Clair is evident when a young Helen eats a whole cookie sheet of candy Clair has made. Helen is punished by having to remain at the kitchen table until her father comes home. She becomes quite ill, but manages to stay in place.

The crazy dance between mother, father, and daughter has a long-lasting effect on Helen’s reality. She helps her father make existence possible for Clair by taking on an adult role with the neighbors and outsiders when Mr. Knightly is out of town. At one point, Mr. Knightly is gone for three months on business, or so says Clair. While he is gone, Helen is greeted with sad nods and casseroles from the neighbors, which she hordes in the deep freeze while mother and daughter live off peanut butter crackers and cheese toast. Helen fears one day she will be responsible for feeding both herself and Clair. She fears her father will never come home.

Sebold reveals a whole set of legacies passed on from one generation to another. Helen grows into a teenager perceiving her family as normal. It’s not until a neighbor points out the mental illness laced through her parents’ actions that Helen feels some freedom and validation. Her feelings about her mother were given a name: insanity.

Clair Knightly is not the most likeable of characters. She came to motherhood late in life only after her lingerie modeling career became nonexistent. The simple detail that Helen grew up in a house where the walls and tabletops were covered with framed black and white photos of Clair wearing lingerie was enough to make me sympathize with Helen, especially as more of the backstory unfolded. But just as I became willing to understand Helen’s act, Helen would say or do something that pushed me away. Whether intentional or not, this distancing was an excellent technique.

I believe every book asks a question of its readers. With Helen’s whole story unfolded, revealed, does this give her the right to take the life of her mother? Is her act a punishable offense, or do readers find something about Helen that helps them hope for her freedom? I’ll leave this for the readers to decide for themselves.

Alice Sebold’s unflinching ability to stare down the everyday violence lurking under the surface deserves both acknowledgment and praise. While this book may bring debate, and is not recommended as a casual read, I strongly suggest The Almost Moon to lovers of writing well done.

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10/21/07

Michelle rated it:

bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, disappointments-and-or-sucked

Read in March, 2008

Let me start off by saying that I love Alice Sebold. 'Lucky' and 'Lovely Bones' were two books that stayed with me long after I finished them.

That being said, I hate to say that 'Almost Moon' was such a disappointment to me. I had read all the bad reviews of it and thought 'It can't be that bad.' Unfortunately, it was.

Was it because the story was about an unsympathetic narrator who kills her aged mother in the first chapter? Perhaps.

The rest of the story...more

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11/13/07

Jelenie rated it:

bookshelves: sept08, too-painful-to-finish

Read in September, 2008

I made it to around 60 pages before I chucked it across the room. Horrible horrible horrible all over the place, pathetic writing with sad, unlikeable characters.

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07/07/08

Kellie rated it:

bookshelves: 2008-reads, fiction-literature

Read in July, 2008

I am very troubled by this book. First, I found it so unnerving that someone could write about killing their mother. What kind of person does that? Well, I googled on Alice Sebold to find out and discovered that Ms. Sebold was brutally raped while attending college at Syracuse University. I believe that this brutal act of violence may be the catalyst that has caused Ms. Sebold to teeter on a violent edge that few authors dare to go. This book is about and told through the voice of Helen. He...more

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12/31/07

Alison rated it:

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: noone

I picked up "Almost Moon" because I am a Sebold fan. Like most of the reviews I have read, I loved "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones". In both of these books there was the beautiful and inspiring as well as the ugly and devastating. Almost Moon is a whole other thing. It contains only the ugly and devastating.

The subject of this book is Helen, who quickly suffocates her mother in the first chapter, and takes the rest of the book to explain her actions, never...more I picked up "Almost Moon" because I am a Sebold fan. Like most of the reviews I have read, I loved "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones". In both of these books there was the beautiful and inspiring as well as the ugly and devastating. Almost Moon is a whole other thing. It contains only the ugly and devastating.

The subject of this book is Helen, who quickly suffocates her mother in the first chapter, and takes the rest of the book to explain her actions, never becomes sympathetic. Instead, It only becomes more and more apparent exactly how dangerously narcissistic and psychotic she is. Yes, her mom was nuts and her dad committed suicide. And yes, she tried a short stint at therapy only to stop for the most superficial reason - she didn't like the sculptures in her therapist's office. And throughout the book we learn about morally questionable things Helen has done in the past as well as watch her commit even more crimes against humanity. And never does she seem to self-reflect - gee, that was wrong. God, I really hurt people when I did that. Instead, she is full of excuses and paper thin explanations. So I read this book in entirety with an ill feeling in my stomach. Never have I less enjoyed a read. There was nothing in this book to raise me out of the murk of this woman's soul depleted life.

However, I have to say I disagree with the NYT reviews. I do find Helen to be a believable character. And I do find her narcissism and hollow but addictive love of her insane mother also believable. I do find how their is little to redeem Helen in our eyes believable. This is insanity. Insanity has its own rules. And Sebold takes us into this quite unpoetic mindset. It's a revolting read, but not without truths.

In summary, I would never recommend this book to anyone. I don't mind reading a dark book once in a while but I still want my reward. Some nugget of beauty and transcendence. There book offers nothing in the way of that. This book is certainly well written and an accurate portrayal of a family gone bonkers but I want more from a book. But I guess I am just a romantic. (less)

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05/27/08

Carrie rated it:

I always want to REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY like her books, but this one was just "eh."

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06/12/08

Carin rated it:

Read in June, 2008

Sebold has a gift for poetic tone and thoughtful metaphor. I love how you're just toodling along, reading away, and suddenly, BAM! she hits you with something like: "She looked up at me and smiled. 'Bitch,' she said. The thing about dementia is that sometimes you feel like the afflicted person has a trip wire to the truth, as if they can see beneath the skin you hide in."
Or: "I got her standing with ease, but once she was upright, she collapsed in my arms. It was all I ...more

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03/02/08

Leslie rated it:

Read in February, 2008

This book was extremely disturbing. The main character is introduced as seemly a normal woman whose elderly mother is entering her final years and at the stage of facing a nursing home or care facility. Even after she kills her mother, she tells the story as if this is just sort of a bummer day, almost, "Oh my gosh, I killed my mother. I don't want to be late for work." Ironically, I was even lulled into moments where I was not completely horrified at what just happened--and continu...more

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02/15/08

Lorraine rated it:

Read in September, 2007

THE ALMOST MOON is a brave book by a courageous writer. After the phenomenal success of THE LOVELY BONES, Alice Sebold could have chosen to write a sophomore novel in which she once again gave readers a sympathetic, utterly likable narrator like Susie Salmon. Instead, she writes through the voice of Helen Knightly, and Helen tells the reader, right from the beginning, that liking her is going to be a challenge:

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it ...more THE ALMOST MOON is a brave book by a courageous writer. After the phenomenal success of THE LOVELY BONES, Alice Sebold could have chosen to write a sophomore novel in which she once again gave readers a sympathetic, utterly likable narrator like Susie Salmon. Instead, she writes through the voice of Helen Knightly, and Helen tells the reader, right from the beginning, that liking her is going to be a challenge:

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 late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered.

The book, told in Helen's voice, is about the 24 hours that follow the matricide. But, in that day, Helen will veer back and forth between a present, in which she deals with the consequences of her actions, and the past, in which the costs of her mother's closeted mental illness make themselves clear to Helen in a series of flashbacks.

Helen's behavior, while at first difficult to comprehend, becomes more understandable as she narrates her story. Some readers will undoubtedly find Helen such a difficult narrator that they will be unable to empathize with her. It's part of what shows Sebold to be a writer who is willing to take risks. Creating a character who, at first read, appears vain and unempathetic, is to take the risk that a reader will not stick with the book until the end. But, as more of Helen's story is told, one sees how damaged she was by a childhood in which her parents' demons injured her. And Sebold's language and skill as a writer give to Helen a depth that demands that the reader "hear her out."

As Helen tells more of her story, we see the shadows of her parents' demons move across Helen's skin. She grew up in a house of secrets but Helen makes her living as a nude art model, and yet, while Helen is nude almost every day, she is rarely naked. She had learned to hide from the people who love her: her ex-husband, her best friend and her best friend's son, and Helen's two daughters, as effectively as Helen's agoraphobic mother had hidden from the world. Killing her mother forces Helen out into the open, and Sebold lets us see an imperfect woman who struggles with all-too-human issues albeit in a violent and extreme way.
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10/22/07

Lex rated it:

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: vacuous coworkers

I'm currently reading this book and feel compelled to comment on it before I finish it. I am reading this book literally back-to-back with The Lovely Bones -- which I enjoyed enough to look into Sebold's other books -- but I find myself dismayed (disappointed?) with it.

Sebold has repeated imagery used in The Lovely Bones, practically verbatim. She's also reused surnames of characters. Initially I assumed this was to make some sort of callback to The Lovely Bones, implying this S...more

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06/04/08

Ralph rated it:

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: people who would sleep at a showing of "Springtime for Hitler"

I have to laugh at the negative reviews of Sebold's Lovely Bones, the comments that Sebold intentionally pulls at the heartstrings of her readers. This book will definitely disprove that. It deserves a serious "WTF." Maybe she was inspired by Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, there are a few similarities. After a powerful first chapter, the book goes completely off the rails. Even knowing what to expect from Sebold's NPR interview, I don't expect to finish this one. It is too sick ...more

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11/21/07

Monty rated it:

Read in November, 2007

I couldn't put this book down so I read it in two days. What I especially liked about the book was how the author used stream of consciousness thinking (flash backs)to explain the thoughts and actions of the main character during a 24 hour period just before and after she kills her demented mother. Also, as unreal as the events seem in the this story, they stem from the main character (who grew up in a disturbed family) making some minor poor choices under stress, then making a major poor choi...more

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