She had learned to hide from the people who love her: her ex-husband, her best friend and her best friend's son, and Helen's two daughters, as effectively as Helen's agoraphobic mother had hidden from the world. Killing her mother forces Helen out into the open, and Sebold lets us see an imperfect woman who struggles with all-too-human issues albeit in a violent and extreme way.
Shelves: , psycho-mental , family , lit-usa , reviewed , dark. Seems like a lot of people hated this book… I'm not one of them. Wickedly funny and really well written, Sebold has a great lyrical style, paints her characters so real they breathe; I empathized. Ten years ago, during a misguided fit of self-improvement, I pasted smiley-faced stickers on the phone in my bedroom and on the one in the kitchen. Then I typed out two labels and taped them to the handsets.
View all 8 comments. Oct 31, Leanna rated it it was ok. However, Almost Moon sounded so bad that I just had to find out how bad it is for myself. First, do not read this book. The protagonist if I dare use that word , Helen, kills her mother.
I am not sure what Sebold intends with Helen and her plot. Are we meant to sympathize with her? Should we feel murder is justified because her mother was not nurturing? Or is the book intended to be a glimpse inside the mind of a murderer? I suspect the first. However, I have absolutely no sympathy for Helen. Personally, they just leave me bored. Sebold seems to delight in shocking her reader. Yet none of these actions is really shocking. Like I said, do not read this book.
But I will also say it was not as terrible as the book reviews made it out to be. Or maybe it is, but reading the reviews took away much of the pleasure of discovering for myself how terrible the book really is.
View all 7 comments. Jun 08, Tucker TuckerTheReader rated it it was ok Shelves: 2-stars , please-don-t-read-this-book , contemporary , thriller. I tried to find and read the worst books ever in my latest booktube video.
Click here to watch it or skip to to here my thoughts on this specific book. Jul 07, Kellie rated it really liked it Shelves: reads , fiction-literature. I am very troubled by this book. First, I found it so unnerving that someone could write about killing their mother. What kind of person does that? Well, I googled on Alice Sebold to find out and discovered that Ms. Sebold was brutally raped while attending college at Syracuse University. I believe that this brutal act of violence may be the catalyst that has caused Ms.
Sebold to teeter on a violent edge that few authors dare to go. This book is about and told through the voice of Helen. Helen g I am very troubled by this book.
Helen grew up with a mentally ill mother and a father who turned out to be almost as ill. Helen kills her 86 year old mother and the book follows Helen through the events that occur after the crime, as well as, Helen's thoughts of her past. There is a small section of the book that gives the reader an idea of what it was like for Helen to be a daughter of a mother like hers and how the title of the book relates to the story.
What we see is an almost moon or a non-quite moon. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides. View all 15 comments. Sep 03, Gary Guinn rated it really liked it. The average rating on Goodreads, with 1,, ratings is currently 3. Most of the ratings and reviews are high. But when looking through the ratings for The Almost Moon , which has an average of 2. There seem to be about as many 1 and 2 star ratings as 4 and 5 star. Many of the people at the bottom of the ratings loved The Lovely Bones , but were disappointed, angered, revolted by The Almost Moon.
The reasons varied. Some could not stomach the basic premise of killing your mother. Many could never sympathize with the protagonist, Helen. I come down on the higher end of the ratings, largely because I was amazed by what Sebold did with narrative time.
The real narrative time of the story is twenty-four hours. I found the characters, both past and present, believable and sympathetic and powerfully motivated. As Helen gradually teases out the truth about her father and mother, and about her own marriage and family, the reader as gradually begins to understand that opening line of the novel. I do confess the novel was slow engaging me, even after the surprising opening line and chapter. That opening line promised more than the next sixty or seventy pages delivered.
I usually give a novel fifty pages to get its hooks in me. Nov 25, Anne rated it did not like it. I was into it from the first page, and I couldn't help crying my eyes out. Later, I read her memoir, Lucky. I didn't think it was quite as well done, but it was about a very powerful topic, and it gave me some respect for where Sebold had come from and how much she had overcome. So, I eagerly anticipated getting this one from the long library waiting list.
The Almost Moon tackles the difficult subject of family mental illness. Given my work recently, this is an area I am very interested in - how genetics affects behavior and how families attempt to normalize "crazy" behavior. Unfortunately, like mental illness, this book is all over the place.
Sebold switches from present time to the main character's childhood to her life with her husband and children - and does so in a way that is haphazard and often confusing. The main character unlike John Nash in A Beautiful Mind is completely one-dimensional and thoroughly unlikeable. Her behavior is erratic and nonsensical, but instead of painting a picture of mental illness and its devastating effects, I simply found this book boring and irrelevant.
It doesn't seem like Sebold did much research into the area before she wrote this. Rather, it's like she just took pieces of bizarre behavior and threw them together hoping something would resonate. For those who have never read Sebold, please read The Lovely Bones. It will only serve to taint your image of Sebold's talent. Aug 02, Diane rated it it was amazing.
Once I began Almost Moon, I could not put it down. I could understand how a 49 year old woman, a product of a dysfunctional, mentally ill family, could snap under extreme pressure and murder her elderly mother who suffered from dementia. This dark, serious novel, made me smile on more than one occasion by the author's use of clever writing techniques. I loved the way that the entire novel took place in a 24 hour period as well.
Alice Sebold did not disappoint me with this latest GEM. Read it for yourself and do not be mislead by some of the negative reviews you may read. You will miss a unusually wonderful book! Oct 27, Yennie rated it really liked it. Have a healthy relationship with your parents? Then you probably won't relate to Helen, the protagonist who confesses to killing her mother in the first sentence of the novel.
Alice Sebold doesn't expect you to understand what Helen has done-- even Helen doesn't quite understand it fully. Effort and compassion is needed just to start understanding the complexities of this mother-daughter relationship, and Sebold does a beautiful job exploring that aspect of an act that society condemns in a knee Have a healthy relationship with your parents? Effort and compassion is needed just to start understanding the complexities of this mother-daughter relationship, and Sebold does a beautiful job exploring that aspect of an act that society condemns in a knee jerk.
Great imagery, as one comes to expect from Sebold and her friends including Aimee Bender. The ending will annoy plenty, but one has to remember that the ending of a book is not necessarily the conclusion of a story; I thought it was perfectly timed and thought provoking.
Dec 02, Lain rated it did not like it. This is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. Not because the writing is poor -- in fact, just the opposite. Sebold is such a talented writer that what she's done with this book is nothing short of a travesty. Am I supposed to feel sorry for Helen, the daughter of a mentally ill mother she ends up killing in her old age?
There isn't enough hurt and anguish in her for me to believe she did so out of long-simmering rage. Am I supposed to feel outraged at the brutality of the act? Clair i This is one of the worst books I've read in a long time. Clair is so unsympathetic that I can't muster even the slightest cringe. Am I supposed to believe that Helen acted out of her own mental illness?
If so, there isn't enough evidence to convince me that she's insane. All in all, the book left me disgusted.
Disgusted in the characters, disgusted in the plot, disgusted that I spent so many hours reading it. Oct 21, Michelle rated it it was ok Shelves: novels , disappointments. Let me start off by saying that I love Alice Sebold. That being said, I hate to say that 'Almost Moon' was such a disappointment to me.
I had read all the bad reviews of it and thought 'It can't be that bad. Was it because the story was about an unsympathetic narrator who kills her aged mother in the first chapter? The rest of the story unfolds as Helen both revisits memories Let me start off by saying that I love Alice Sebold. The rest of the story unfolds as Helen both revisits memories of growing up and deals with what she has done. Here is my advice: Don't bother reading this one.
May 12, Sherree W rated it it was amazing. So, this is the only book that I have felt a duty to review. People who are uncomfortable with the many topics broached topics that don't make for polite conversation may feel that this book goes too far I live with an Alzheimer's patient.
She is turning 90 in July. She is my mother. Luckily, thus far she is not too much like the mother in this book, but I was gripped from the first pages. The situation and the thoughts of the protagonist, while hard to take and easy to deride, are slightly So, this is the only book that I have felt a duty to review.
The situation and the thoughts of the protagonist, while hard to take and easy to deride, are slightly different if you have experienced a loved one's slow deterioration into a different person from dementia.
Sadly, this widely panned book is one of the finest I've ever read. Very raw, very real! Please don't discount it because of people who aren't able to 'get' this one. Alice Sebold did an amazing job and must have known she would be risking a lot to write this. I for one am very glad to have read it. People who only want to read books where the protagonists are simply good people who make good choices are missing out on some amazing experiences.
We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you. Some of the techniques listed in The Almost Moon may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them.
DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url. If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. Very good reviews have actually been given up the Almost a Full Moon book. This book is really helpful and also certainly add to our knowledge after reading it.
If you like e-books Almost a Full Moon, please share this url in your social media. Enjoy totally free Almost a Full Moon eBooks Including entire e-books and preview chapters from leading authors.
Read the best Reviews from our individuals. Some individuals have given a excellent review to the book. Immediate download totally free Almost a Full Moon e-book and get the collections of other popular e-books. Why has The Lovely Bones resonated so strongly with American readers?
Presents a collection of stories selected from magazines in the United States and Canada. For a very brief moment during the s, America was moonstruck. Every boy dreamed of being an astronaut; every girl dreamed of marrying one.
But despite the best efforts of a generation of scientists, the almost foolhardy heroics of the astronauts, and 35 billion dollars, the moon turned out to be a place of 'magnificent desolation', to use Buzz Aldrin's words. In Dark Side of the Moon, Gerard DeGroot reveals how NASA cashed in on the Americans' thirst for heroes in an age of discontent and became obsessed with putting a man on the moon, in the process limiting what could be acheived in space. Drawing on meticulous archival research, DeGroot cuts through the propaganda peddled by the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations - not to mention the NASA spin doctors - and exposes the truth behind one of the most revered myths of American history.
In "The Lovely Bones," the spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder and her family's efforts to find the killer; and in "Looking Glass," Susie's story is integrated with cases of actual missing children. Almost a Full Moon is a warm-hearted story of family, community, food and home.
A boy and his grandmother host a gathering in their small cabin in the middle of winter. Friends travel from near and far, and some new friends even turn up. The walls of the cabin are elastic and the soup pot bottomless; all are welcome. Based on the lyrics of Hawksley Workman's song from his holiday album Almost a Full Moon, this book evokes both the cold and the coziness of a winter's night: crisp clean air, sparkling snow, the light of the moon, welcoming windows, glowing candles, family and friends.
The spare text is beautifully complemented with the rich illustrations of Jensine Eckwall, a new talent to Tundra. She brings beauty and a hint of magic to Workman's evocative lyrics; together, they create a world and a night that will enchant readers of all ages.
The ultimate summer escape! No one makes you laugh like Jo Watson!
0コメント