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A Harrowing Story About Mental Illness
“The story is about a mother-daughter dynamic that is diseased to the core; a dynamic that had gone on for 40 years and ended when the 50-year-old daughter killed her mother who was dying of dementia. The book is about what happens after the murder including flashbacks that span the duration of that dynamic with some anecdotes that will make your heart weep.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-11-10.
First off, this book is beautifully written. Alice Sebold has a penchant for making the bizarre and twisted lyrical and even ethereal. Her writing made reading this book tolerable. The story itself, however, had a different effect on me. It's very disturbing and heartbreaking. The first paragraph in the book goes as follows:
"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 late0in0life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered."
Helen, the 50-year-old murderous protagonist, truly hated her mother, and loved her all in the same measure. As she lets the reader in on her most inner thoughts, reasons and memories, a heavy mental and emotional toll is taken and the heartbreak starts to mount.
One of the most disturbing scenes in this book starts with Claire, Helen's mother, letting teenage Helen fend for herself when a group of six men knock on their door and ask to speak to Claire about an incident that happened in the neighborhood a month back. The men were livid and wanted to hurt Claire, who was scared. Instead of not answering the door, she lets Helen handle the situation while she goes down to the basement and turns on the radio. One of the men ends up attacking Helen, all the while Claire in the basement listening to music.
Every anecdotal story that is recounted by Helen gives the reader more insight into the level of mental illness with which this family is afflicted. The sad part is that Helen is a mother of two adult women and a grandmother to boot. If the pathology is hereditary, which is what the book suggests, how will the rest of the family fare? You'll find out when you read this book, which is not a pleasant read, but it's a window into a world hardly discussed and characters hardly portrayed. For that alone, this is a worthwhile read.” -
Disappointing ...
“I loved "Lucky" and "The Lovely Bones" but this book was so painful to read that I couldn't even finish it. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-10-16. -
Frustrating and disappointing
“The novel was dark and creepy. I could almost feel the protaganist's mind unhinging as she slipped over the brink from hating the constraints of her life trapped as a caregiver to an elderly, mentally ill mother to actually doing something about it.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-20.
The story could have been a great thriller, a real look inside of the mind not of the stereotypical killer, but of a woman slowly pushed to the breaking point via years of not having needs met.
What was maddening is that it meandered along with many accomplices and betrayals along the way that were just not believeable. That Helen did not feel any trepidation about hanging around with her mother's newly killed corpse and giving it a bath before dragging it around the house was a clever way of telling the reader that yep, Helen had indeed lost her mind. That Helen's former husband demonstrated equal ease in hanging out in an empty house with his newly-killed ex-mother-in-law took the his character from plausible to just convenient. Nobody in this book seemed to find spending time with the recently killed to be remotely disturbing. Yuck.
Still, I slogged through, finding out more and more eerie, creepy things about the main character's family. The reason I toughed it out was because there was one main question threading through the entire novel...would Helen be found out as the murderer, or would she go free?
In the end, the reader is not given any satisfaction, any closure at all, about this question. It was that moment that made me want to throw the book across the room...I felt the reader had been had, had been duped into searching for an answer that would not be provided. For the disturbing images and implausible situations we were forced to endure, we deserve a decent ending.
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A lacklustre follow-up
“It is indeed a case of a sophomore slump for Sebold... having written such a compelling novel like 'The Lovely Bones', it's invevitable that any work that follows would be compared to it - perhaps unfairly.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-09.
In 'The Almost Moon', Sebold tries to get into the psyche of how a woman could be driven to murder her own mother. However, instead of gaining reader empathy, the protagonist, Helen, annoys us with her constant 'I just killed my mother, you know' refrain for the next 24 hours that the story takes place in.
She not only gets her ex-husband involved in her heinous act by playing the victim calling for help, she also sleeps with her best friend's son, Hamish, then dumps the unwanted truth on her younger daughter Sarah, who had unwittingly come for a visit, and then dumps her as well at a bar, to sleep with Hamish again, in exchange for a getaway car.
I'm not sure if the protagonist is seeking for moral redemption or escape from her real self, but she comes across as a self-involved character who tries to dispense her guilt on the people around her. The fact that her own father had killed himself - driven to madness by her crazy mother - begs for a reprisal that Helen, disappointingly fails to do, by the end of the book.
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It's a cross between Lucky and Th Lovely Bones...
“The novel's mood is predominantly dark, but it's got its light feelings here and there. As the child of Sebold, with ancestries linking from Lucky, a very dark, very frank, very brutal memoir about rape, and The Lovely Bones, a lighter tale on a similar topic: the rape/murder of a young girl and the impact it has on those who knew her - it's not surprising that this novel came out the way it did. I like to think of Sebold as an "deep, dark issues" sort of writer with a mother complex. If you compare her use of mothers in her previous works, it wouldn't shock a reader when they read Almost Moon.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-06.
Almost Moon is confusing, and sometimes a little annoying. By the time you're almost done with it, you're in a race to finish it, find the ending, and be done with it. It hurts, and it makes you angry, and it reminds you of your own relationship with your parents - and your childhood, which a lot of people might want to forget... at least the bad stuff. Almost Moon surfaces that stuff up, and I think that's why a majority of people looking for an instant Sebold classic will be disappointed in this novel: the ending is ambiguous, just like the motives of the daughter who kills her mother. We're not sure what exactly happens and we're left to our own devices. I hate it when an author does that, but maybe it keeps the spirit of imagination alive - and keeps us talking about the book.
I felt really bad for the main character. She was so messed up from her childhood with her mother that it warped her sense of justice entirely. She couldn't move on from Point A to Point B like any other person would. So there's plenty of pity and almost dislike for her.
I would suggest you buy it used, or check it out from a library like I did. I don't think I would've been satisfied paying money for this. But it doesn't turn me off Sebold. If she came out with another book, I'd read it. She's like the Ice Cream Man: Many flavors, all are delicious - some to everyone, many to specific individuals, and a few to those unique tastebuds that can handle the explosion of bitterness. Who knows... maybe that next book of hers is my flavor!”
