I totally paused!

Title: The Almost Moon
Author: Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 304
How I Read It: Hard copy purchased by me.

Stay tuned for a giveaway on this book!  I’ll be posting it later today!!!

Synopsis: With fierce intelligence and emotional intensity, Alice Sebold brings us a searing portrait of a mother-daughter bond that descends into murder.

Clair and Helen Knightly are a parent and child locked in a relationship so unrelenting that they have become the center of each other’s worlds.  But as this electrifying novel opens, Helen crosses a boundary she never thought she would approach.  And while her act is almost unconscious, it somehow seems like the fulfillment of a lifetime’s unspoken wishes.

Over the next twenty-four hours, Helen’s life rushes in at her as she is forced to confront the choices that have brought her to this one riveting crossroad.  As a woman who spent years trying to win the love of someone who had none to spare, she now faces an uncertain and dangerous freedom.

With her unflinching ability to confront the violence and danger that lurk beneath life’s everyday surface, Sebold explores the complex ties within families, the meaning of devotion, and the thin line that separates us from our most haunting impulses.  The Almost Moon is unforgettable, a raw and powerful story of passion and redemption written with the strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.

*Synopsis taken from the book

My Review: I loved The Lovely Bones and I purchased this book solely on that recommendation alone.  I liked this book, but it was not the same type of book and in many ways I had a much harder time with it than the authors debut book.

As the reader, we know from the book jacket that Helen murders her mother – but that fact was still a bit of a surprise to me.  I think somehow I thought maybe it was just a metaphor, or somehow Helen was living in a fantasy world to an extent and performed this act there.  Because this is a very real event in this book, it made the whole thing very difficult for me from the start.

Helen’s relationship with her mother is not a healthy one, with her mother who is both mentally ill and agoraphobic.  It’s clear that Clair is descending into the last phase of her life, becoming more detached from reality and treating all the people in her life more and more poorly.  I found it difficult to tell if this was as a result of her aging, or if she had truly been that nasty her entire life.  As we follow Helen through the book, it becomes obvious that Clair wasn’t entirely cut out for normal society or raising children, which makes things all the more sad.

I found Helen’s actions throughout the book to be more and more confusing, which is probably the point considering it takes quite a bit to murder someone to begin with.  The steps she takes over the twenty-four hour period we watch her are just baffling, I can’t even describe how it makes me feel.  I will say that this book is not for the faint of heart – the subject matter is extremely difficult and there were times I had to set it down to take a break.  I liked it, but I also can’t see myself reading it again because it was just so hard for me to read.

Even the most healthy mother-daughter relationship has times of frustration, and this book takes many of those frustrations to the extreme.  It makes me wonder what things are going to be like when my own parents start to decline, and I’m grateful that I have other siblings to share that burden with.  One of the tragedies of Helen’s life is that she is really alone in taking care of her mother, and she never manages to escape the small town life she so desperately wants to get away from.  Her actions during the day we witness further solidify that she will continue to live in some kind of prison for the remainder of her own life – whether that’s physical or in the one she creates in her own mind.

This book will likely make you confront ideas and conventions in your own relationships.  It highlights what can happen if you manage to cross the line into the unthinkable.  And makes you wonder what on earth could be going on to drive people in the directions they go.

Read this book if: I think this one is going to draw a lot of emotions from a lot of people, so go into it warned.

My Rating: 3.5/5 – Two thumbs up, fine holiday fun!

Synopsis: “My name was Salmon, like the fish: first name, Susie.  I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her — her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling.  Out of the unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

My Review: I pretty much loved this book, but I will say from the start that I can absolutely see why it is not for everyone.  This is tough subject matter, a very emotional ride, and something you won’t easily forget.  If nothing else, I would encourage you to definitely read it in the privacy of your home – it’s not the sort of book I would have taken out in public.  The tears started flowing from page one, and didn’t let up much throughout the entire book.

I’m not sure what I thought this book would be – I knew it was the story of a girl who was tragically murdered, but I guess I assumed ahead of time that it was a murder mystery.  It is definitely not that.  We are introduced to Susie’s murderer on the second page and there is no doubt whatsoever that he is the guilty person.  Instead, this is a tale of what heaven might be like, what things could be after you die, and what is left behind on earth after you go.

We see the entire story through Susie’s eyes, she tells us about the past and present through her narrative from heaven.  She tells us a variety of things – about herself and how she’s coping with her own death and wanting so desperately to be alive; her family and the varying struggles they go through in the aftermath of her death; the people who continue to think of and care for her year after year once she’s gone.  There are even flashes to the early life of her murderer, which is interesting, though I didn’t find it sympathetic in any way.  Perhaps the hardest part of all is seeing how her murderer goes on with his life, almost as though nothing had ever happened.

Although the more supernatural elements of this story aren’t really plausible, the on earth parts are both terrifying and all too real.  I think most women have gone through times when they are overtly aware of their vulnerability, and this book absolutely opened this up for me.  Sadly, this kind of thing does happen to women of all ages, and it’s difficult to turn a blind eye to this very realistic aspect of the story.  At the same time, there are aspects of that which made it a better story for me, because it genuinely made me feel and think about the world I live in.

Read this book if: I can’t say enough good about this book, and I’m sad I waited as long as I did to read it.  My only complaint is really that I’m not huge into supernatural stuff, so some of the elements towards the end of the book were a bit more difficult for me to get through.  That aside, it was fantastic and I would recommend this one to anyone.

My Rating: 4.5/5 – Did I say cool? Make that awesome!