The Almost Moon

August 27, 2007
Sebold's disappointing second novel (after much-lauded The Lovely Bones
) opens with the narrator's statement that she has killed her mother. Helen Knightly, herself the mother of two daughters and an art class model old enough to be the mother of the students who sketch her nude figure, is the dutiful but resentful caretaker for her senile 88-year-old mother, Clair. One day, traumatized by the stink of Clair's voided bowels and determined to bathe her, Helen succumbs to “a life-long dream” and smothers Clair, who had sucked “the life out of day by day, year by year.” After dragging Clair's corpse into the cellar and phoning her ex-husband to confess her crime, Helen has sex with her best friend's 30-year-old “blond-god doofus” son. Jumping between past and present, Sebold reveals the family's fractured past (insane, agoraphobic mother; tormented father, dead by suicide) and creates a portrait of Clair that resembles Sebold's own mother as portrayed in her memoir, Lucky
. While Helen has clearly suffered at her mother's hands, the matricide is woefully contrived, and Helen's handling of the body and her subsequent actions seem almost slapstick. Sebold can write, that's clear, but her sophomore effort is not in line with her talent.

Starred review from September 1, 2007
Murder, madness, and marital woes are the knotty conundrums Sebold ("The Lovely Bones") offers readers in her latest tale of psychological horror. In a moment of panic, Helen Knightly kills her dementia-ridden mother. Appalled but not apologetic, Helen spends the next 24 hours pondering the chain of events that led her to this choice. From the very first sentence, which is a masterpiece of understated horror, readers are fully immersed in the perspective of an unstable yet highly functioning mind. The pace is superb, a slow tease that alternates between calm, reflective flashbacks and tense, tight descriptions of Helen's attempts to hide her crime and avoid the police. Though secondary characters are somewhat flat, they're reassuringly sane and normal compared with Helen, which makes it easier to stomach difficult scenes. Readers who appreciate suspense will find themselves unable to put the book down, especially near the end, when the question of whether or not Helen will escape the consequences of her actions becomes almost too much to bear. A daring, devastating novel; highly recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/07.]Leigh Anne Vrabel, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2007
In her highly anticipated second novel, after the groundbreaking The Lovely Bones (2002), Sebold strikes two notes: grim and grimmer.Within pages, Helen, a middle-aged, depressed divorc'e, kills her elderly mother; she spends the next 24 hours reliving her miserable childhood andher attempts to break free of it, coming to therealization that she had seen the yawning tide that washer mothers need and fallen in. Its not until Helen reaches high school that she realizes her motheris mentally ill, her father is emotionally absent, andher primary purpose is to be her mothers proxy in the world and to bring that world back home. Although she eventually marries and has two children, moving far away in what she hoped would be the geographical cure, she ends up divorced and living blocks from her childhood home.With an unwavering focus anddetached, downbeat prose, Sebold followsHelen onherseemingly inevitable psychological descent.The resultis an emotionally raw novel that is, at times, almost too painful to read, yetSeboldstays remarkably true to her vision, bringing readers close to aflawed woman who lives in avery narrow world, one full of duty, obligation, and pain.Sebold brings to the portrait such honesty and empathy that many will find their own darkimpulses reflected here; however, it is so unremittinglybleak that it seemsunlikely that it will be greeted with the same enthusiasm as her debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)

November 26, 2007
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. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 27).