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 enlarge | Author: Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Rating:  187 reviews
Sales Rank: 13619
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316677469
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780316677462
ASIN: 0316677469
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 I loved "Lovely Bones" but this book is a disappointment.... October 16, 2007
11 out of 16 found this review helpful
I loved "The Lovely Bones" and know a lot of its success was due to people misinterpreting the books message--at heart Sebold is a writer from the dark side. A lot of folks will not like this book because of its dark subject matter, that I can handle, what bothers me is that the book has no soul, no redeeming features. The last book I felt this way about was "The Ruins."
The opening line is quite a hook as Helen Knightly tells the reader she has killed her mother. Mom is in her 80's and Helen almost has you believe she deserves to die. Helen however is too self centered, and the story declines from here into almost a comic book parody. The book is filled with flashbacks that I found somewhat confusing.
I highly recommend The Lovely Bones but not this disturbing novel.
 Far from The Lovely Bones October 16, 2007
23 out of 39 found this review helpful
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily". So begins Alice Sebold's latest novel, "Almost Moon". Helen Knightly is a divorcee, whose elderly mother is suffering from dementia and who is abusive and unpleasant to be around. Her mother is clearly mad - but it turns out she has been so her entire life, it's just the medical terminology that has changed. Helen is at breaking point: she suffocates her mother, dumps her in the freezer and goes off to sleep with her best friend's son.
I enjoyed "The Lovely Bones" and looked forward to reading this book, but I disliked it so much that it was a struggle to finish it. I intensely disliked Helen - I thought she was unbelievably self-centered and I hated the choices that she made. I think it was Sebold's intention for us to dislike Helen but at the same time to understand why she did the things she did (and so we learn about her extremely dysfunctional childhood and failed marriage). Which is fine, and we do grow to understand her, but it doesn't make for enjoyable reading.
Sebold came up with a good premise for a novel - and a great first line - but ultimately she fails to deliver. This is an unpleasant book and I cannot recommend it. If you liked "Lovely Bones" - avoid this.
 Blows The Lovely Bones out of the water! October 16, 2007
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
Alice Sebold is dark. Her first wildly bestselling novel dealt with the murder of a child. This novel deals with matricide. It's laid out plainly in the opening line, "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." Me, personally, I've never thought about murdering my mother. And yet, I totally understood how this previously law-abiding citizen wound up in the situation she was in. Sebold had me with her every step of the way.
The entire novel actually takes place in just about 24 hours. Forty-nine-year-old Helen is paying a visit to her difficult and declining 88-year-old mother Claire. In a moment of weakness (Or is it mercy?) Helen snaps. She suffocates her mother. This is horrible, but I believe most readers will understand why it happened. Helen had been a virtual slave to her mother for years. Their love/hate relationship is as complex as they come. Although the events of the novel unfold in the course of a day, through flashbacks and memories we really get the story of Helen's relationship with both of her parents as well as her ex-husband, friends, and now adult daughters. Helen is a product of her upbringing. She's become what she had to become. So, when she snaps and kills her mother, I understood it.
But from that one pivotal event, she does everything wrong. She compounds her mistake in truly horrible ways. It is the ultimate downward spiral, and watching it is like watching a train wreck--you can't look away. And I couldn't stop turning pages fast enough. You know it will end badly as she pulls others into her nightmare, but you just have to see how it ends. Now I know, and I find it a bit haunting.
This is that rare and most wonderful of things, a literary page-turner. The writing is fantastic and the plot compulsive. I saw Sebold speak to a room full of booksellers in June. She said, "This is what you're all wanting to know: Does the follow-up to The Lovely Bones suck?" Let me tell you, it does not suck. Sebold's sophomore effort is a triumph. Read it.
"Killing my mother came easily." October 16, 2007
12 out of 29 found this review helpful
In spite of the beginning of Sebold's novel, where she impulsively smothers her eighty-eight-year-old mother, Clair, the topic offers much material, the complicated relationships of mothers and daughters, especially the kind of toxic relationship that often develops in dysfunctional families. What is extraordinary- almost slapstick- is Helen's resolution to years of seething resentment, as well as her decision about what to do with the body, who to contact and what her actions will mean for the immediate future. The death is a fait accompli; once done, little is left but deciding the next step.
Sebold quickly disabuses me of any pretensions about this pathetic mother-daughter connection, a long history of rage, resentment and twisted love the hallmark of a mother and daughter who act out their tug of war on a small stage. Any similarity to other such situations end there- Helen's disposal of the body narrated with the embellishment of years of pain, their history related in a disturbing diatribe, giving vent to a girl's efforts to find love where there is none. At forty-nine, Helen is a mother and a grandmother, certainly having learned something along the way about what we pass on to our children. But Sebold clings to Helen's commitment to her action, regressing to an angry child raging at a terrible mother. In death, as in life, Clair has nothing to offer; her daughter having stolen her mother's bitter legacy, her last breath.
Sebold offers her readers but page after page of anguish, turmoil and a profound lack of love in a family of three. Ex-husband Jake, a stupid and meaningless coupling with her best friend's son and her recreation of an unfortunate childhood leave a vacuum in their wake, save a shocking decision by a daughter whose life might have been far less successful, given her family history. Helen chooses to descend into this madness, her adult life clearly different from her childhood. I find it impossible to fathom the point of this story, except perhaps as a matricidal fantasy. The Almost Moon is a human train wreck, the only fascination in passing the scene of the accident, a piece of work unremitting in its self-absorption. I simply cannot care about these characters or whatever purgative message the author intends. The title, "The Almost Moon", refers to an almost mother, never quite there, the perfect foil to an almost novel.
Whatever Sebold's talents, this novel fails to inspire me, a toxic stew that is vaguely repulsive for all its fantasy fulfillment; I haven't the energy to consider the context of this work, weighted by overwhelming emotional burdens that certainly describe Helen's state of mind and her years of denial at the hands of a selfish woman; but there is no meat here other than the temporary exorcising of Helen's demons, a daughter in eternal lock step with a destructive woman now that the deed is done. Luan Gaines/2007.
 "There are secret rooms inside us." October 16, 2007
9 out of 17 found this review helpful
Forty-nine year old Helen Knightly is severely depressed, but she is not fully aware of how low she has sunk until one day, in a fit of despair, she smothers her demented eighty-eight year old mother. Although Clair Knightly had been a great beauty who modeled for lingerie ads, the years have not been kind to her. She becomes needy, demanding, and eventually, agoraphobic; she seldom leaves her house, and then, only while buried under heavy blankets. Helen's father is extremely protective of his wife, but Clair's strangeness becomes an intolerable burden on both him and their only child. Most of the neighbors shun them and Helen feels like a pariah. After her father dies, Helen is locked in a vise. She was divorced years earlier and her children are grown and on their own. She is left alone to care for her ailing mother, who becomes the center of her universe. This heavy and unwelcome responsibility has a devastating impact on Helen's emotional well-being.
In "The Almost Moon," by Alice Sebold, Helen spends the twenty-four hours after her mother's death looking back at her unhappy childhood, married life, and many years as a single woman, wondering how she could have committed such a cold and brutal act. How will she escape the consequences of her crime? What words should she use to explain the reasons for her actions to her ex-husband, Jake, and her grown daughters, Sarah and Emily? She will have to endure the censure of her friends and loved ones and the inevitable punishment that will follow. There was a time when Helen thought that she could live a normal life. However, even a satisfying marriage to a loving man and the birth of two beautiful daughters could not erase the pessimism and self-loathing that Helen's dysfunctional parents instilled in her.
Alice Sebold's second novel is a dismal work that features a pitiful and self-destructive protagonist whom it is difficult to like. Helen is foolish and self-centered. Since she is not overtly psychotic, her behavior is difficult to comprehend. Many children have parents who make them miserable and who have become a burden to them. However, it is one thing to want to kill a parent; it is quite another to go through with it in such a shockingly cold-blooded manner. Helen never explores her options before she takes this terrible and irrevocable step.
This book is all the more disappointing since Alice Sebold is a stylish writer who knows how to construct memorable scenes and create evocative imagery. There is humor here, but it is dark and biting rather than amusing. As the reader gets to know Helen, it becomes apparent how much pressure she has been under and it is possible to empathize with her. After all, she has martyred herself for a parent who is incapable of giving her love or gratitude, and Helen is undoubtedly so lonely and exhausted that she can no longer think straight. Still, the central theme of the book and the way that it is developed are so unpleasant that "The Almost Moon" is likely to evoke discomfort rather than admiration among Sebold's readers.
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