Meandering Thoughts: Alice Sebold's "The Almost Moon"

Over the weekend, I finally began (and finished) Alice Sebold’s new novel, “The Almost Moon.” I’m not much of a book reviewer, so here’s my quick take on this book:

The difficulty faced by Sebold in creating a followup to her previous novel (the multimillion-selling “The Lovely Bones”) is the indelible impression left on readers by that book. For me, as a reader, one of the things that I was absolutely captivated by in terms of “The Lovely Bones” was Sebold’s character of Suzie Salmon, the young, dead narrator of the story – it made an otherwise dark story extremely palatable, largely because of the grace and beauty of that youthful presenter and the idea that came with her of a heaven being personally defined. It added a light sheen to a dark story; ultimately, I feel that this is what made “The Lovely Bones” wonderful.

In “The Almost Moon,” Sebold sets out to shed the otherworldly childlike presence that inhabited the pages of “The Lovely Bones.” She does so immediately and with the subtlety of a jackhammer – her lead character in “The Almost Moon” is a woman in her late forties who, within the first pages of the novel, gets frustrated with her infirmed, mentally-questionable, elderly mother and kills her. It’s no brutal a starting point than “The Lovely Bones” (which is told from the point of view of a young girl who has been raped and murdered), I suppose, but I think I was hoping for something that might be even slightly reminiscent of that sense of innocence and beauty. That’s lacking in “The Almost Moon,” which takes us through a day in the life of an extremely troubled woman.

In short, I didn’t like “The Almost Moon” too much. When it comes down to brass tacks, though, this was probably an impossible book to follow. As much as I admire Sebold’s artistic intent to create distance between “The Lovely Bones” and what will be the remainder of her career as an author, though, I found myself missing the childlike voice and sense of innocence that was so central to that book as I read this one.