The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold and Joan Allen

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The Almost Moon from Literature & Fiction

The Almost Moon
Available from Amazon
Price: $4.00
Updated on 6-30-2008.

Features

Audio CD

Publisher: Hachette Audio; Unabridged edition (October 16, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1600240305

ISBN-13: 978-1600240300

Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces ()

From Publishers Weekly
Joan Allen fails to breathe sufficient life into Alice Sebold's second novel to make it worth the listen, but she really doesn't have much to work with. Helen Knightly, a divorced mother of two grown daughters, impulsively murders her 88-year-old mother, Claire. The story then flips back and forth between Helen's response to her present-day act and long flashbacks exploring her love/hate relationships with her emotionally volatile, agoraphobic mother and her suicidal, peculiarly obsessed father. Allen's calm, even voice makes Helen's most irrational actions (smothering her mother, cutting her clothes off, bathing her dead body and dragging it down to the basement) sound nearly as reasonable to listeners as they do to Helen. Allen also marvelously evokes the cracked, demented tones of Helen's aged mother. Unfortunately, the older Claire Knightly appears in only the smallest portion of the book, and Allen barely troubles to distinguish the voices of the other characters. Her unvarying voice, combined with the tediously introspective text, make this audio a real slog.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Since Alice Seboldâ€™s The Lovely Bones (****1/2 Nov/Dec 2002) was a runaway hit, critics inevitably compared that poignant tale of a murdered teenage girl to this long-awaited, brooding account of a woman pushed to tragic extremes. Some critics praised Seboldâ€™s evocative writing and bleak depiction of family relationships in the shadow of mental illness, but the majority of critics complained that the characters were wholly unsympathetic, their decisions and actions incomprehensible, and the plot implausible. Some of the discord may result from Moonâ€™s ugly subject matter and the natural compassion elicited by the young murder victim in The Lovely Bones (as opposed to the cold-blooded Helen). Seboldâ€™s fans may want to skip this one.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Almost Moon: A Novel (Hardcover) On September 30, 2007, I posted an admiring review about Alice Sebold's first novel, "The Lovely Bones." That book was a literary sensation in 2002 and sold more than ten million copies worldwide. Sebold was gracious about her success, but seemed a little baffled that millions would interpret it as a sentimental message of hope - because she herself, despite overcoming great personal adversity - isn't a born optimist. In "The Lovely Bones," she parsed violence without being graphic and explored relationships with a delicate hand. Her detached and deconstructive writing style - then and now - reminds me of the great Joan Didion. Unfortunately, the success of "The Lovely Bones" works against Sebold in "The Almost Moon." I believe it will anger readers who made her first novel a blockbuster. The title refers to someone who's not all there - a celestial body in periods of darkness - hiding bits of itself to the naked eye. It's a story about things we hate about ourselves, things we go to great lengths to hide to meet society's demand to be "normal." While "The Almost Moon" is a superbly crafted tale of madness, it's also a house of horrors better suited for readers used to the savage imagery of Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and David Lynch. It's as surreal and unpleasantly graphic as one of Francisco Goya's Black Paintings, a monster eating one's child. Unlike "The Lovely Bones" - which unfolded dreamy observations with subtlety - "The Almost Moon" arrives like a sledgehammer. It feels deliberate and unflinching, as if Sebold had no interest repeating the atmosphere that made her first novel a critical and commercial success. Helen Knightly is an artist's model near 50. She murders her mother Clair - who has dementia - after Clair loses control of her bowels. (Sebold owns the template for writing dazzling openings too compelling to ignore, pulling you into a riptide that won't let go.) But "The Almost Moon" quickly takes a sharp turn into the bizarre - and becomes an incessantly bleak novel of mental illness that leaves nothing to the imagination - sometimes in ways more disagreeable than shocking. However true it reflects the things we think about, it's one of the darkest works of 2007. Any non-crime novel that explores, for example, the swirling blood patterns left behind on a staircase wall from a man who falls after shooting himself - isn't aiming to be a breezy read during the holiday season. During the next 24 hours, Helen Knightly feels liberated and caged. She succumbs to sexual and subjectively deviant impulses others might try to suppress. But she still has the presence of mind to annotate her behavior in ways which show she's no dummy. She washes and drags her mother's body to the basement. She has sex with the 30-ish son of her best friend, who's all sensuality and no substance. She thinks about Clair, her sarcastic, reclusive, once beautiful and now dead mother. Helen recalls her dead father (loving and gentle but also mentally ill, who liked to carve wood into whimsical shapes). She thinks about her ex-husband Jake (supportive present-day accomplice), her two daughters (apparently normal), her art teacher pal (for whom she poses in classes as a model) and her neighbors (generically nosy and friendly). She thinks about her best friend Natalie (unhappy but in love with a construction worker) and Natalie's son Hamish, Helen's aforementioned one-night paramour. Is Helen herself insane? Does she get away with murder? Without giving away the ending, we sense her fate can't be as bittersweet as Susie Salmon's in "The Lovely Bones." Life's cumulative disappointments and low self esteem prevents Helen from planning too far ahead or from expecting too much from the world. She's forever trapped in the muck of low expectations. In sum, Alice Sebold remains a dazzling writer. She doesn't preach, hates sentimentalism and keeps her prose deceptively simple. She cares more about relationships - and the events which pull them in every direction - than about churning out a potboiler every two years. She's become a thinking person's horror writer, exploring the wreckage of dysfunctional people after hooking you with a stunning premise. But by sticking to her guns, exploring the gory truths of mental illness, adding layers of misery to ensure Helen's story feels plausible - Sebold challenges the paying reader to enter a hell from which there may be no return. Even if "The Almost Moon" is an accurate depiction of mental illness, I wonder if it really breaks new ground in a work of modern fiction. Ironically, the same uncompromising approach we admire about Sebold - makes her second novel too harrowing to recommend to everyone. Comments (7) | Permalink | (Report this)

The Almost Moon
Available from Amazon
Price: $4.00
Updated on 6-30-2008.