"The Almost Moon:" A Review

The Book's Cover

I recently just finished the novel, The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold. Sebold is also the author of The Lovely Bones, which I never read but I did see the movie, which I enjoyed. This lady tackles some insane issues in her novels and she does so in a way that it is uncomfortably comfortable to read them.

I did enjoy The Almost Moon. It was a quick read and it flowed relatively well. Most of the characters were not as deeply drawn as I would have liked, especially the main characters, Helen and her mother. However, Sebold does get across how shitty her protagonist's life was during her childhood and beyond. As you get into the meat of the novel, you realize the story will be revolving around those two and the dynamics of their extremely f-ed up relationship and how unimpressive real life can be.

The novel starts out with Helen killing her mother with a towel rather than clean her up after an uncontrollable bowel movement. Bam, throwing craziness at us right beyond the cover page. After kicking off the novel with matricide, the story delves further and further into the messed up life that her mother’s psychosis caused for Helen and her father. The repercussions flow throughout the entire novel, spilling into Helen’s adult life and messing up her relationship with her two daughters. Sebold throughly gives us the sense that in the aftermath of her childhood Helen lives in a messed up world with no real human connections and a constant longing for the love and physical touch of her parents that she never received.

Even though you wade through this psychological quagmire I recommend reading this book, if only to give you something to read when there is nothing else. While the characters may not be as colorful as we might like, the story itself has enough weight and merit that it carries you through the novel. You do get introduced to a lot of characters while never getting to know any of them well enough to develop a real emotional connection, but you can almost feel the pain and angst Helen suffers during the 24 hours following her mother’s murder and as she recalls the events of her life.

The Almost Moon is not the best book I have ever read, but it is certainly not the worst book I have ever read either. I would also wager that this is not the best book Sebold has or will ever write during her career. I am going to give it 2 out of 5 stars on my arbitrary scale of a book’s value that means nothing to anyone but me.