The Almost Moon: A Novel Summary and Reviews

The Almost Moon: A Novel
by Alice Sebold

The Almost Moon: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Alice Sebold
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-16
ISBN: 0316677469
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Book Reviews of The Almost Moon: A Novel

Book Review: Painful. Necessary?
Summary: 3 Stars

It may have been necessary for Alice Sebold to write this novel. Whether the reader will find it necessary or not (I will not consider whether the reader will enjoy it; I do not think this book is one to be enjoyed by reader or writer) will most likely depend on the reader's biography.

Having said this, I must admit that if any reader could find /Almost Moon/ necessary, I probably should have been that reader. Like the book's narrator (and, as I understand, like Sebold herself), I had a mother who was mentally ill, and whose illness was her most important influence on my life. Like the narrator, my feelings for my mother ranged from love to pity to hate (and sometimes all in the same moment). And like the narrator's mother, my own mother became harder -- even impossible -- to love as she aged.

But perhaps because I did not remain a dutiful daughter to my mother, did not stick around to be needed and abused, I was able to follow the narrator only so far. Perhaps if I had kept my mother close to me, I would be able to sympathize not only with the Helen's devotion to her mother and the fury with which that devotion suddenly snaps, but with the bizarre action that follows.

I found, however, that I could enter imaginatively into the narrative only as far as the murder. Whether that is my failing or Alice Sebold's, I am not sure.

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