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| The Almost Moon: A Novel | 
| Author: Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $2.66
You Save: $22.33 (89%)
New (89) Collectible (22) from $2.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  169 reviews
Sales Rank: 7911
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New in shrinkwrap! No remainder marks.Ships within hours from Charleston, SC. Established seller with nearly 10 years of online history.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Receives three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen's fine professional acting voice September 6, 2008
Alice Sebold's THE ALMOST MOON receives three-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen's fine professional acting voice as it tells of Clair and Helen, a parent and child locked in a dangerous relationship - and what happens when a boundary is crossed that will change both their worlds. The 24-hour period which follows, brings revelations to both in this moving novel.
 Bleak! September 4, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I felt totally miserable after finishing this book and that's the way I DON'T want to feel. Helen is the artist's model daughter of Claire and Daniel, both of whom are tainted with hereditary madness. After Daniel's suicide, Helen succumbs to a final rage as her demented mother taunts her without let up, smothers her, washes her soiled body and stuffs her into a chest freezer until she decides which actions to take. She rings Jake, her ex husband who agrees to stay with her until she makes a decision and then contacts her elder daughter. It's then that the reader can see the cycle begin again with enough inherited madness seeping through to infect the next generation. It's a bleak, unforgiving book which depressed me beyond words and one which I would not recommend to anyone.
Is Almost Good August 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The best part of reading Sebold is the interesting, quirky way she approaches serious topics. She pushes her themes of madness and murder to the edge of the horror genre. Although the writer doesn't crossover to a true vampire tale, I almost wish she had. Instead, we get a life-sucking mother and the psychologically-bitten daughter. Both of whom are, not far into the book, unlikeable characters and impossible for me to connect with. The story has a promising start with Helen Knightly stating in the opening line that she's committed the most ignoble crime, matricide. The writer is masterful in capturing a tortured childhood ruled by mental illness - that of both the obviously sick mother and seemingly enabler father. You don't have to like the child or the adult she has become to appreciate how the child Helen tones survival skills to negotiate her place in the family. Although she is born late into her parents' marriage, she is not the adored only child one would expect to meet; she's the interloper between two people who would have done best if left to dance together alone. Yet, the good stuff about the book doesn't save it. The beautifully writ language notwithstanding, the characters fail to ring completely true. The characters and the plot hang, never becoming entirely believable as either the monsters of fantasy or in reality one's own declining parent or odd next-door neighbor. Two scenes are especially abhorrent: Helen's trophy-taking in serial-killer fashion and the mob of neighbors bent on hurting the mother and attacking the girl in her stead. This is a dark, disturbing story with an unfinished ending. It failed to illuminate the generational destruction of untreated mental illness. That's another crime.
 Very Moving and Well Written August 24, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Helen Knightly has spent all her life looking after her mother, Clair, in some form or fashion, being tied to her in an unhappy, unhealthy, unrelenting relationship that has taken a toll on her in various ways. Now, Clair's dementia has reached the point that something has to be done; she is going to have to leave the house--a task that was psychologically painful and difficult for Clair--as she is no longer fit to stay home by herself. Helen is relieved and anxious at the same time and as she deals with her mother's vitriolic tongue and loose bowels, she surprises herself by smothering Clair.
Over the next 24 hours, Helen behaves as irrationally as any human being would, becomes entangled more and more in a web of lies and (through memories) exorcises some of the demons of past as she deals with the mental illness of her family.
Sebold has done an incredible job of writing about mental illness, and as an author she passes no judgments, gives no advice, just has Helen tell her story and leaves the rest to the reader. In Helen, one sees a character so human and unpredictable that it was almost uncomfortable at times to read her thoughts, feeling like an intruder or eavesdropper.
I read several negative reviews and I think it was really Sebold's amazing talent that prompted these. Those readers that complained about this or that action of Helen's appear to have been expecting Sebold to pass the appropriate (to them) moral judgments on said action and when she didn't these readers assume she condones these actions. Other readers couldn't believe Helen would act the way she did, having apparently never acted irrationally under stress themselves, and didn't see the deep realism of Helen's character acted out in her irrationality.
I found it a very moving book and at times it was too emotionally taxing and I had to take a break from it. It's hard to say I "liked" it, because, how can one "like" a story about mental illness in all it's dirty, real life, day-to-day struggles. I was reminded of Nabokov's Lolita--I didn't "like" the subject matter, but loved the book. This is another instance of that. The Almost Moon, while not for everyone, is a emotion-packed, realistic novel from a very talented author.
 Very strange family ties... August 19, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Strange book. I'm of two minds about it. It is interesting in that it delves into the psychological problems of the protagonist's parents. Issues including depression, suicide, dementia, agoraphobia are all part of the novel. Helen acts in some ways after her mother's death that ring true. On the other hand, some of her actions do not ring true. And while caregiver stress was part of Helen's problem, I felt the author could have brought this more to life so we could understand better what made Helen kill her mother (not a spoiler - happens in the first chapter). As it stands, it takes the entire book to see any reason for her actions, and then the reasoning still seems hazy. Organizations can offer help to the homebound.
I read this book just a few months after the death of my own mother, and that might have colored the lens from which I viewed this book. The book cover says this book is "raw and powerful" and it is. But I finished the book feeling uneasy and unsettled.
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