The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

The opening paragraph is bound to pull anyone in to this book - "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily." I certainly was no exception, and after reading the "Lovely Bones" and "Lucky" by the same author, I was looking forward to another excellent read. This is the story of Helen Knightly, a fifty something mother who decides to kill her own eighty-eight year old mother. The reasons by behind it at the beginning of the book seems ...
...childhood in the hands of her mother and has finally had enough of her mother's nasty ways. All is to be revealed about why she is driven to do such a thing through flashbacks to said childhood and to the present, the hours following the murder. '''My Thoughts''' **************** I have to say that I really struggled with this book. My main reasons are because I didn't find any characters that I particularly warmed to, least of all the lead character ...

burtybookworm 28.11.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

== THE ALMOST MOON == === ALICE SEBOLD === I shouldn't do it, but do it I do over and over. That is I chose books so often from their covers, I should listen to all those old adages out there. But I have to admit when choosing books from the library I often pick up books that have a very plain cover - and I'm usually pleased with the result. I do look at the genre etc, I'm not that bad, and when I saw a crime novel with a pale blue cover with just ...
...a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare'., so I decided for some insane reason, that it would be a good read!! Was I right? I'm afraid that I was rather disappointed on this occasion, granted there was some good writing in it, but I generally found the book rather depressing and with several flaws in it. === THE STORY === Alice Sebold opens "The Almost Moon" with the sentence, "When all is said and done, killing my mother ...

oldchem 05.10.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

...she would even approach" says the cover-flysheet blurb. Actually, it's not true. Not only did killing her mother come easily - as Helen tells us in the very first line - it was actually something that she'd spent much of her childhood fantasising about. OK we all have moments, especially as children, when we believe we would like to kill our parents…but Helen was different. She wouldn't just kill her mother, she would cut her up into tiny pieces, ...
...mail them off around the world. In fairness, given the childhood she had ~ or at least the mother she had ~ it might not be that much of an over-reaction given that it was just a fantasy. In reality Helen continued to spend her life looking after her mother. She aided and abetted her father in trying to keep up appearances with the neighbours, and getting the family through the 'hard days' without too much trauma. As we meet Helen, she is divorced ...

hiker 06.12.2007 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

Few books open with the main character killing their mother within the first chapter, which makes The Almost Moon quite unusual. The mother is Clair Knightly, a woman who's needed looking after her whole life due to mental illness - a situation that's worse than ever now she's in her late eighties and needs help with everything. Helen has looked after Clair since her father's death, with a little help from a neighbour. She feeds and washes her mother, ...
...She is intending to ring the hospice to take Clair when, out of impulse and confusion, she smothers her. Alice Sebold excels in building up the layers of complexity surrounding each relationship and each element of the story. Helen blames her mother for her father's death and her own relationship with her daughters is strained. The only person she's close to is her best friend, Natalie, who works as a life model - as does Helen - at the local university. ...

DoubleFantasy11 16.09.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

...I acquired this book - The Almost Moon - in a very unexpected way as it was my Secret Santa present at my work's Christmas meal. Somebody obviously knew that I liked reading and I have to admit it makes a change from the crazy ideas or sexy undies that I normally seem to receive. It looked as though it was going to be quite an absorbing book too especially as the blurb on the back cover promised much! It starts off by saying that: 'Helen Knightly ...
...is about at all! The story is set in America and is told by Helen herself. In the very first sentence she tells the reader that she has killed her mother (so I'm not spoiling anything for anyone here) and then goes on to describe her actions, which are most bizarre at times, over the next twenty four hours. It seems strange that the timespan is so short, but the events are interspersed with lots of flashbacks that delve into events that led to that ...

kingfisher111 05.03.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold

...with this book, as honestly the only reason I picked it up was because I was looking for another of Sebold's book at the library. They didn't have it, but they did have The Almost Moon, and as I hadn't read it before I thought I'd give it a go. The plot is based around the character of Helen, and her mother Clair. On the very first page Helen kills her mother, and the rest of the novel is based around the aftermath of this and the story of her life ...
...life was like with Clair, the relationships she has with her daughters which she feels have been strained because of her mother, her ex husband, and her father. The book is extremely interesting to follow. For starters, the subject is completely unusual and therefore interesting, I'd certainly never read anything like it. I felt that the book was very realistic, as it touched upon the strange emotions that go through your mind after committing such ...

hi_nicola 02.01.2009 · Read full review
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Review of The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold