I recently finished The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold. I wish I could say that I had read it, but I didn't. I got it on audiobook. Lest you think I am actually a. that lazy and/or b. that afraid of library books that I chose the non-tactile route, I should explain that I got it in preparation for my drive to and from New Hampshire last weekend. That, and it's not available in paperback yet, and for some reason hardcovers from libraries freak me out much more than paperbacks of comparable age. Must be the plastic slipcovers. Shudder.
Anyway, the novel opens with the line: When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. It certainly doesn't beat around the bush the rest of the time, either - the story is about a middle-aged woman and her relationship with her mentally ill mother, whom she ends up, yes, killing. Helen, the protagonist and killer, spends the 24 hours after killing her mother slowly unraveling and engaging in various irrational activities. The narration weaves back and forth between past and present and we gradually learn about her childhood, adolescence, failed marriage, and dysfunctional family.
I was about halfway through when I started reading customer reviews on Amazon and quickly learned that the general opinion was very mixed. Some lauded her grim, steady depiction of the at times ugliness of humanity. Others were completely appalled that a novel's protagonist could kill her mother, no matter how riddled with dementia the mother was by that time.
For example:
"I started to read the first few pages of this book and was nauseated at what I was reading. This book is inhumane. I would not recommend any one read it."
"The book is mostly about mental illness and I have to wonder if Alice Sebold had a momentary lapse into psychosis while writing this."
"I hated Helen's character, and it wasn't just because she killed her own mother. The things she did with Clair's corpse were absolutely ridiculous and disgusting, and her behavior directly following the murder was also completely unbelievable. This entire book is just way too bizarre and weird for my taste, and I was very put off by the whole thing. Do not even bother with it."
I have to admit that I never once felt disgusted by Helen's actions. (Although at one point I thought she was going to poke out her dead mother's eyes with scissors and had to turn it off for a good 30 minutes before I was brave enough to turn it back on.) Somehow, even though the words I was hearing were startling, they made sense in a dark, macabre sort of way. And I found the stark honesty to be beautiful. I found Helen's erratic behavior somehow understandable, maybe even forgivable, from an objective standpoint. I found her demented, innermost thoughts about chopping her mother into little bits... fantastical but sympathetic. (Oh, and - she didn't poke her eyes out. She just cut off her braid and stuck it in a ziploc bag and took it home in her purse.)
My undergraduate thesis was a novella called 'Paper Money,' a piece of fiction based on very real and very accurate details about my family. The narrative opens with: “She’s dead, Jen.” The phone slipped on the sweat around my ear. I closed my eyes and leaned against the bed. It is about my mother's death - though, as I always disclaim when telling people about it, my mother is very much alive.
When thinking about the ideas I wanted to explore in my senior thesis, my relationship with my family, specifically my mother, came to mind. I wanted to explore the cultural divide that has existed the moment I was born on American soil, and how a catastrophic event might force me to face that divide head on in ways that I'd never imagined I might have to. So, in fiction, I killed my mother.
No one has actually outright told me that this was a morbid or cruel thing to do, but I already know that it is. And I know that people think it is, and were politely refraining from pointing it out to me. The way I thought about it, it was a cruelty in the name of art. I still think about it that way - I have plans to expand the novella into a full-length piece that explores not only the cultural divide in America, but to bring it back to Taiwan and really give my protagonist a chance to tackle her dual heritage in a place that is wholly unfamiliar to her. But in the four years that have passed since I wrote the original piece, my relationship with my mother has changed such that it makes me that much more heavy-hearted to think about going back to the place in which I need to imagine that she's dead.
'Reading' The Almost Moon, though, has renewed my faith that my ideas were in the right place. That a story like this is worth telling, because it touches on emotions that, though unorthodox and painful, are universal and exist just beyond our painted public faces, behind closed doors, our secret shame. While reactions to stories like this are mixed, that very dichotomy makes the readers whom the writer does penetrate that much more valuable, and the connection between them is that much stronger.
One of the positive reviews said this: "Alice Sebold is one that writes from a place of true dysfunction with honest, detailed accounts. If you are uncomfortable with her voice either you have never been hurt deeply to your core or [as we in the past have been taught to do] brush your experiences under the rug as if nothing ever happened... If you hated this novel, I suggest you need to re-read it through someone else's perspective. Pick a family member or a friend who might seem distant and keeps you at arms length. You might 'see' them, gain a glimpse of understanding about them, maybe even help them."
If I look into my core I know that I have stories that yearn to be told. I wish that I could put the rest of life on hold while I tell them.
