First thoughts...

Being a college student it is always hard to keep up with new and upcoming writers. It is also hard to follow the writers we love because our heads are buried in our text books. I created this blog to provide you with some school requirement-free reading guidance (Just in case you didn't have time this month to browse the back covers of the "Just Released" section in Barnes and Noble).

For my first review I decided to choose a writer who I have come to greatly admire . Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones was one of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read. She painted a picture of the tragic tale of Susie Salmon so comprehensibly it was almost as if the scenes were being drawn in front of me as I read. For those of you who have never read 'The Lovely Bones', I highly recommend it.

Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon, her newest novel, is very different from The Lovely Bones. Those who are expecting a novel similar to it may be disappointed. The Almost Moon is a glum tale about a depressed forty-nine year old woman named Helen. I am not going to lie, Helen is very difficult to like. She is self-centered, she pities herself, and she is foolish. It doesn't become clear to her how low she really is until one day, in a moment of rage and despair she smothers her eighty-eight year old mother who has been suffering from dementia. Don't be alarmed, this fact will not ruin the story in fact Alice Sebold lets you know this in the summary on the back cover. The following chapters are of the next twenty-hours after Helen has killed her mother. Helen begins to look back on her life including her relationship with her mother, her childhood, her husband, and her children as she tries to figure out how she was capable to commit such a heinous act. Despite her loving husband and two wonderful daughters Helen was never able to erase the negativity and self-hatred that her parents had ingrained in her. Helen is not exactly a psychopath but it becomes difficult to understand why she does the things she does and why she thinks the way she does.

This all may sound dull and depressing but it was truly a wonderful novel. The novel explores the psychological effect parents can have on their children, whether it be positive or in Helen's case deeply negative. Although Helen has murdered her mother, as the novel goes on it becomes easier to empathize for her. At times the novel does in fact become discomforting and the humor can get dark, but for those who are fans of Alice Sebold, it is definitely worth the read. In The Almost Moon Alice Sebold was able to create memorable moments and write in a way that evokes vivid imagery, just as she did in The Lovely Bones.

Critical Praise:

"Sebold can still write beautiful, haunting scenes.” — Washington Post Book World

“Compulsively readable.” — People

“It is indisputably a good thing when writing is so vivid it causes physical reactions. . . . [Sebold’s] willingness to pry into the darker aspects of human consciousness is what's important.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review