Book Review: The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me begin by acknowledging that I did not finish this book, and I did not begin it of my own choice. I am not counted among the fans of Alice Sebold. I guess I didn't even take note when the book was released in 2007 (Little Brown/Hachette), but I did hear about it on the coattails of the movie based on Sebold's first novel, The Lovely Bones, and when one of my book groups selected it, I kept my mouth shut. After all, I participate in this group largely for the sake of interacting with the kinds of folks I hope will soon be reading my own novels and other writings, to hear what they think of the books 'everyone is reading.'

At the request of my neighbors, I even facilitated their reading the book, helping some of them to obtain book-club copies. But before the book club sent my copy, I sampled it via Kindle. I was not impressed. In the first ten percent, I found no reason to read any more other than being able to participate in the discussion at the end of the month. So I borrowed the audiobook from the public library. When I delivered the other members' copies, I heard the word was not encouraging. A member who snowbirds had written that she'd looked at the book on line and decided she didn't need to participate.

I tried. I really tried. But before I'd finished the second of eight discs, I was putting most of my energy into avoiding being in the car when there was nothing else to listen to. I e-mailed the book group, and yes, I headlined my note "The Almost Groan," but I begged one of them to tell me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. One told me she'd gotten to page 40 and closed the book for good. Another, who was sharing with a third member, and so needed to finish quickly, gave the definitive vote: There was no hope. It never came to a reason to read it.

I'm not complaining about the darkness of the story, though it certainly lacks the self-deprecating fun of a gothic romance. Shoot, from what I got through, it lacks all romance. I'd love to read a really skilled story of mental illness and its effect on a family. But even in less than a quarter of the book, I simply hated the murdered mother, and hated the murdering daughter who narrates the book. No one seems to have any redeeming or sympathetic qualities. There were cameo appearances by a couple of good-seeming neighbors, but they were cardboard cutouts, as if Sebold cannot imagine a good-hearted, caring soul.

Perhaps because I was listening to the book, and trying not to listen too closely, I had a difficult time putting together all the flashback information - about the daughter's childhood, her father, her failed marriage, and her surviving family (and flashbacks do sort of violate the "24 hours" structure of the book). But the worst part was that I simply didn't care what I wasn't getting; I wanted only to get on to something less dreadful, or something that at least I could learn from. I also particularly resented Sebold's characterization, from the opening page, of the mother as a dementia patient. Clearly, the woman had been psychotic for most of her adult life. It's unfair to the many families that suffer through more "normal" diagnoses of dementia.

What I had disliked most about The Lovely Bones was the unresolved anger it suggested to me about Sebold's own experience as a victim of rape, different as it was from the crime she depicted in the novel. I wouldn't think of opening her nonfiction account, Lucky. And now that she's taken her unhappiness to a totally different situation, I feel even sadder for this writer who seems to be getting nothing herself from the practice of her art and certainly is giving this reader nothing. I would worry even more if I were her mother, or her daughter. I hope she can find some healing and hope, and maybe win me over with her next book. And I wonder what we'll talk about when the book group meets.