The Almost Moon: A Novel by Alice Sebold
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Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel
Book Review: Well, *I* liked it!
Summary: 5 Stars
Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon starts with a murder, a clumsy, unpremeditated affair that happens almost naturally. It was easy, Helen Knightly tells us in the book's first sentence:
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."
It's a sentence that makes you want to read more. The book continues:
"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."
One paragraph in and it's clear that you're in for something special.
What follows that delicious opening is the story of how Helen came to kill her mother--the toll that Claire's mental illness took on the family over decades, its unexpected consequences, the mental abuse, the exhausting intensity of Helen's love-hate relationship with her mother. This back story is interspersed with the continuing story of what's going on in the present: what Helen does immediately after the murder (whatever you're thinking, you're wrong), the eventual discovery of the body by outsiders.
That Helen commits murder so clumsily, with only the most amateurish attempt made to cover it up, is a great strength of the book, I think. This is the sort of mess that a real person might make of matricide. And while Helen's behavior after the fact seems bizarre, that too lends the story credence. Who in such circumstances would be fully sane?
While The Almost Moon is not a suspense novel per se, it is certainly suspenseful. What will become of Helen, given the murder investigation and her own feelings of...not quite remorse, is never clear, not until the book's last page. And when it comes the ending is, really, just right. This one's highly recommended.
-- Debra Hamel
Book Review: An honest novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished reading "The Almost Moon" and have been reading the reviews this book has gotten since its release. I disagree with all the negative remarks. It is my assumption that those who have given this novel a negative review have never been honest with themselves.
I do not connect with many authors but I connect with her. Alice Sebold is one that writes from a place of true dysfunction with honest, detailed accounts. If you are uncomfortable with her voice either you have never been hurt deeply to your core or [as we in the past have been taught to do] brush your experiences under the rug as if nothing ever happened.
I applaud her for outing the truth about dysfunction. She speaks from a place where personal torment is normal and niceties are not. When you grow up in dysfunction it isn't dysfunction to you; it is how the world is because you know nothing else. This book is a very good representation of what life is like for MANY people and should not be dismissed.
She has been able to articulate a mindset that often many cannot grasp because it is unspoken. That is one of the underlying themes in the novel; secrets are kept and held for no great reason and turn into tragedies because of no communication about what is really happening. There is no communication because they were never taught how. When you've learned to hide your secrets it is a tough tide to fight against when you want to change.
I guess I am having trouble articulating in direct words what I saw in the book because it is so powerful and thorough. Ms. Sebold did it best through her characters. It never hurts to broaden one's perspectives no matter how uncomfortable it may make you.
If you hated this novel, I suggest you need to re-read it through someone else's perspective. Pick a family member or a friend who might seem distant and keeps you at arms length. You might "see" them, gain a glimpse of understanding about them, maybe even help them.
Book Review: Can killing one's mother ever be understood?
Summary: 5 Stars
Alice Sebold examines some of our darkest emotions. Let's face it, murder commonly occures in the family, husbands killing wives, mothers killing children fill our evening news almost daily. Yet, we do not often hear about a rage a daughter can feel towards her own mother, but it does not mean it does not exist.
In The Almost Moon, the protagonist, Helen, finds herself in a perfect storm of emotions, anger at her narcissistic mother for not ever really being a mother to her and tormenting her father, attachment to her mother and extreme responsiveness to her mother's needs, dealing with her mother's dementia and decline. Helen realizes that her mother is not competent enough to stay in her home any longer, yet the home is her entire life. Suffering from mental illness the mother has confined herself in the house for years, refusing to leave it even to save a child's life. Helen feels acutely for her mother b/c the old woman has taken over her life, the way a selfish needy adult can take over a life of a child, who would do anything to try to win parental love. So here she is, taking care of the mother who never loved her, who never really was a mother, a narcissist that affirms her own self-worth by diminishing everyone else, a woman she both loves (b/c she is her mother and every child loves her mother, no matter how undeserving some parents are, that is a way we are programmed) and hates. Moreover, Helen knows that her mother can not stay in her house nor can she leave it. On impulse, propelled by all these contradictory feelings, Hellen kills her mother. This is a book for people who struggled to break free from the disfunctional family patterns and to be free to live their lives had to kill their mothers, may be not literally and physically, but symbolically, because the realization that one's Mother was never really there for you when you were a child, that what was claimed to be love was not real, certainly feels like death. A wonderful, if difficult book.
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: 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.