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Title details for The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold - Available

The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold
Joan Allen
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 16, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415945964
      • File size: 255436 KB
      • Duration: 08:52:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 870
    • Text Difficulty: 4-5

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 27, 2007
      Sebold's disappointing second novel (after much-lauded The Lovely Bones
      ) opens with the narrator's statement that she has killed her mother. Helen Knightly, herself the mother of two daughters and an art class model old enough to be the mother of the students who sketch her nude figure, is the dutiful but resentful caretaker for her senile 88-year-old mother, Clair. One day, traumatized by the stink of Clair's voided bowels and determined to bathe her, Helen succumbs to “a life-long dream” and smothers Clair, who had sucked “the life out of day by day, year by year.” After dragging Clair's corpse into the cellar and phoning her ex-husband to confess her crime, Helen has sex with her best friend's 30-year-old “blond-god doofus” son. Jumping between past and present, Sebold reveals the family's fractured past (insane, agoraphobic mother; tormented father, dead by suicide) and creates a portrait of Clair that resembles Sebold's own mother as portrayed in her memoir, Lucky
      . While Helen has clearly suffered at her mother's hands, the matricide is woefully contrived, and Helen's handling of the body and her subsequent actions seem almost slapstick. Sebold can write, that's clear, but her sophomore effort is not in line with her talent.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 26, 2007
      Joan Allen fails to breathe sufficient life into Alice Sebold's second novel to make it worth the listen, but she really doesn't have much to work with. Helen Knightly, a divorced mother of two grown daughters, impulsively murders her 88-year-old mother, Claire. The story then flips back and forth between Helen's response to her present-day act and long flashbacks exploring her love/hate relationships with her emotionally volatile, agoraphobic mother and her suicidal, peculiarly obsessed father. Allen's calm, even voice makes Helen's most irrational actions (smothering her mother, cutting her clothes off, bathing her dead body and dragging it down to the basement) sound nearly as reasonable to listeners as they do to Helen. Allen also marvelously evokes the cracked, demented tones of Helen's aged mother. Unfortunately, the older Claire Knightly appears in only the smallest portion of the book, and Allen barely troubles to distinguish the voices of the other characters. Her unvarying voice, combined with the tediously introspective text, make this audio a real slog. Simultaneous release with the Little, Brown hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 27).

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Listeners might be more easily absorbed into this brief lyrical novel were they not told in its opening sentences that the story's narrator has just suffocated her rapidly deteriorating mother. From that point on, the story is told as a flashback involving an only child, a mentally ill mother, and a father who finally succeeds at suicide. Flashback requires reflection. Despite Joan Allen's more than adequate rendering, audio by nature pushes ahead, not leaving a lot of space between the words. Repetition and slight variation, two of Sebold's strong points on the page, become petty annoyances. New-age musical interludes between chapters are out of place with the tone of the novel. In this case, Sebold's excellent writing has to be read on the page to be fully appreciated. R.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      Starred review from January 15, 2008
      Much has been made of Sebold's opening line to her new novel, but it immediately sets the listener up for a roller-coaster journey into ethics and family relationships that may seem too familiar to some and too discomforting to others. Helen Knightly's climactic decision opens the book, but her history with her mother, Clair, and her deceased father are brutally explored through the skillful weaving of memories and haunted immediacy. Almost Moon is very different from The Lovely Bones, and yet the strength of the author's sense of danger told rather matter-of-factly is highly compelling. Joan Allen's reading is almost hypnotic. Highly recommended.Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY

      Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:870
  • Text Difficulty:4-5

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