Book Review
Title: The Almost Moon
Author: Alice Sebold
Genre: Crime/Family/Psychological
Rating: ****
Review: I didn’t know much about The Almost Moon, other than it focuses on the relationship between a mother; Clair and her daughter; Helen. After absolutely loving both The Lovely Bones and Lucky I was so excited to dive into this story by one of my all-time favourite authors. It is easy to tell from the beginning that the mother and daughter have a very difficult love/hate relationship, with a lot more hate recently but Helen still cares for her elderly mother as she has dementia, but she only does it out of some forced sense of loyalty. As this novel is told through Helen’s perspective we bounce back and forth in time. Helen often revisits her childhood memories of her mother, and we learn she was a lingerie model before marrying Helen’s father and having children which threw her into despair. Helen’s mother often gets violent towards her father and Helen even suspects that she may be responsible for his death. Helen, on the other hand, has lived a fairly normal life but I suspect this isn’t actually the case.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we learn from Helen’s musings on her childhood that she thought frequently of killing her mother as a child and assumed it was normal for children to have these kinds of thoughts and emotions. Almost immediately, red flags were raised in my mind and I was right to worry as Helen then proceeds to smother her mother to death, fulfilling her childhood fantasy. However, Helen is aware she can’t get rid of the body by herself and calls her ex-husband Jake for help. He agrees to fly back but I don’t think it is with the intention of helping her dispose of her mother’s body, but he also shares some of these worrying characteristics with Helen. Left alone with her mother’s corpse Helen continues to care for her as waits for Jake but she does move the body to the basement with the intention of putting her in the freezer and possibly dismembering her later on.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Helen has no remorse for killing her mother and we begin to realise by picking through the pieces of her broken childhood that her mother has had this coming for a while. As a child her mother made her extremely self-conscious about the way she looked, make her develop issues with her weight, completely put her down when she announces she is pregnant with her first child and put a huge emotional barrier between her and her father, neither of whom could handle her mother without suffering. Helen also has some very disturbing attitudes towards sex as she mentions feeling lust when looking at her mother’s naked body and she is in a secret relationship with her best friend’s son; Hamish and it does faze her one bit even when she knows she has seen this boy grow into a man.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, things only get more bizarre. We learn that the family were shunned when Clair’s inaction caused a young boy named Billy to die after being hit by a car. With her father working away from home and her mother hiding from everyone it is left to Helen to deal with irate neighbours and this is also the first time Helen hears the term mental illness in relation to her mother. While Mr. Forrest does look out for her, Helen is forced to bear a burden she shouldn’t have done as a young child. So far absolutely nothing about this family or their situations is sitting well with me and I am sure there are many more secrets Helen is hiding, and I am not sure if I want to find out what they are. Helen, while she is an unreliable narrator, seems to be honest, and over half the events that have taken place come from her memory. I don’t know how the repercussions of killing her mother is going to affect Helen since they have always had a strained relationship.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, Jake has arrived to help Helen sort out what she has done but before they can even get back into her mother’s house the police have arrived. Helen and Jake both know it is only a matter of time before the police learn her mother was murdered, and they race to come up with a plan, but it also drags up a lot of old feelings between them, despite the fact they are both seeing other people. As it turns out Helen remembers what happened with Manny and it is looking like they will try and pin the murder on him if they can, but Helen’s mental state right now is very fragile, and I can’t see her holding out under pressure.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, everything is going badly for Helen, when she and Jake realise that the police might already know of her involvement in her mother’s death despite their story about Manny. However, it is made worse when Natalie, Helen’s best friend learns that Helen is sleeping with her son and he seems to be madly in love with her and this also seems to upset Jake in a way. There are a lot of emotions flying around especially for Helen, who goes from numb, to desperate to distraught in minutes and Jake isn’t much better as he is giving in to old vices such as smoking and drinking.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, so much happens that really give away the ending of the novel, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a concrete answer to what Helen did. However, I think Sebold has done this to let the reader make up their own mind about Helen’s fate. Overall, I didn’t love the Almost Moon as much as The Lovely Bones and nowhere near as much as Lucky, but it was a very interesting read and I would recommend it.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
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