The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
I previously read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold two years ago and really, really enjoyed it, so I decided to give her another chance and picked up (or rather borrowed from my mother) The Almost Moon.
From beginning to end the book covers a span of 24 hours, during which the main character, Helen, murders her elderly mother by suffocating her with a hand towel on the back porch of her childhood home and then trying to deal with the consequences. Helen's mother, Clair, spent her entire life battling demons. Be it mental illness, be it depression, you're never really sure. Sebold makes hints regarding what her mother's real problems were, but ultimately leaves it up to the reader to decide what could possibly cause such bizarre behavior from a person. Behavior such as not being able to leave your own house without a blanket wrapped around you to protect you from the world. Behavior such as witnessing a small child get hit by a car and not being able to move from your sidewalk to either see if he's ok or call for an ambulance. The latter of which resulted in an almost lynching by the angry neighborhood fathers.
Helen's father was not without his own demons as well and committed suicide in front of Clair after Helen was married with her first child. This caused the burden of caring for her mother to fall on Helen's shoulders for the rest of her mother's life. Theirs was not an easy relationship and Helen spent the majority of her life feeling like a slave to the entire situation. Thus, the one day where she had reached her breaking point and took a towel to her mother's face.
I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. The first couple of chapters moved very slowly and felt like they weren't really going anywhere that I, as a reader, wanted to travel. Then the pace picked up and I really started to enjoy the experience of reading this book, until the very last chapter. I'm not sure what happened, but it just sort of unraveled in the end and was very, very anticlimactic. I had a very similar experience reading The Lovely Bones. Both were good books until the end and then the stories just got lost in the shuffle.
I did enjoy Sebold's character development as far as Helen was concerned. You watch a woman who has spent her entire existence supporting and caring for a mother she can't even say with conviction that she truly loves, go through this horrible transformation from bitter daughter, to murderer and the recklessness with which she begins to make choices afterwards. The problem is, Helen is really the only character that has any depth to her. The other characters involved are very superficial, but I have a feeling that wasn't an accident.
Of Sebold's two novels I've read, The Almost Moon is most definitely the weakest but still a fairly enjoyable read.
Book Rating: C+