Our first discussion! Hooroo! As a reminder, just add a comment to get things rolling. Feel free to ask questions (I’ve got a few) make comments, or even ask about stuff that confuses you.
I just reread The Almost Moon, and it really drew out the scholar in me. It just makes me want to think. I find it remarkably compelling. It seems that for every statement I make about the novel, there are three questions, and they just keep forming. And so to begin this discussion, I present to you a number of statements and questions. Let the discussion unfold.
Most of the time, writers do not kill a main character in the first chapter. Were you surprised? What else surprised you?
What inspired me to choose this novel was the dynamic of ugly/grotesque with the beautiful/rapturous. It makes a reader uncomfortable. There is a liminality (definition below) of the two states and between the two states. What do you make of these characters on the brink?
Speaking of being on the brink, Helen doesn’t know where she’s going (either literally or metaphorically) – all she knows is where she doesn’t want to be. What does this state entail for her?
One thing I noticed was a distinct separation of roles within one character, e.g., Clair is not seen as an intellectual person by her daughter, only a “broken mother.” She is only seen as an intellectual, and (coincidentally?) as a mentally ill person, by her friend the neighbor. When Helen sees Clair’s intellectual persona, it appears as an aberration – something her mother does, occasionally, but not part of who her mother is. How does this splitting affect Helen? Clair?
It’s often joked that most women become their mothers. Is Helen becoming her mother? In what ways are they similar? How are they different? Has Helen shaped her adult self in response to her mother?
Let’s talk about relationships. What do you see in the relationships in the novel? Mother and daughter, female friendships, male-female friendships, husband and wife, daughter and father. What’s missing?
Dichotomies (such as the dynamic between weak and strong, and the argument between crazy and sane) really only function in opposition, and there is a lot of opposition in this novel. Who functions in opposition? To whom? How?
How do gender roles (i.e., traditional male-female roles and dynamics) come into play in the novel? Who is weak? Who is strong? Who is crazy? Who is sane? Who is beautiful? Who is ugly?
While discussing Clair and Helen, let’s not forget her other parent – how did Helen’s father impact the lives of his wife and daughter?
On our facebook page, Jason mentioned the situation Clair is in. What do you make of the elderly character(s) in the novel.
Liminality, a good working definition from Wikipedia: “a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes . . . The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives. People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality)
It's so amazing that we can diverge in our thinking about this book so much. I couldn't finish it, as I found it the exact opposite of compelling. Sebold writes well enough, but that can't save The Almost Moon from being yet another book that just tries really hard, but ultimately to no avail. For a novel that's supposedly exploring the nuances of family, it comes off as emotionally preposterous--all the characters just seem so contrived and their actions predictable--you knew, with how the narration dwelt so heavily on the braid early on that Helen was going to have to claim it, conquer it, make a talisman of it in some way, you knew she was going to sleep with her best friend's son (or at least try--and his super-premature ejaculation seemed pretty ridiculous, honestly).
ReplyDeleteI see Melissa put "bluestockings" as one of the tags for the post. To whom are you referring? Helen doesn't seem fit, as she seems to have achieved some kind of third-wave feminist contentment. She has control over her life, she exists as an intelligent and intellectual (at least in that middle-class NPR-listener type of intellectualism that is the apogee of intellect for the vast majority of us who are white and educated and from comfortable economic backgrounds), has been and continues to be an object of male desire, though, ultimately, she holds control over her own sexuality and how she wishes to be desired. While I'm not suggesting that the novel presents some silly utopia of inter-gender relationships, I don't think it's really interested in them, or in exploring oppression or the like. Rather, it's a novel about intra-gender, specifically female, relationships, and how this affects the rest of your life, your relationships generally, etc. (Caveat--If you're referring to Clair and not Helen--well, that's a whole different bag of chips, there.)
Again, maybe it's because I stopped at page 160--as I found the novel unbearably tedious in that it wanted me to get caught up in the drama of how Helen and those around were going to deal with the murder but provided me with un-compelling characters who inspired no emotional empathy on my part--but the novel seems to want to do so much, and just can't. I understand how many people could find it immensely thought-provoking as it concerns how our experiences as children affect how we act as adults and how we treat our own children (and those of our friends), as well as how otherwise rational people think in the face of terminal illness--something I'm having to deal with in my personal life right now. So I'm not trying to knock The Almost Moon or say it's a bad novel--again, I don't feel justified in passing that sort of judgment about a book I never finished. I'm providing my reaction to the novel, hoping maybe someone can convince me it's worth revisiting, as well as raising some issues to spur on conversation. I know I'm opinionated, but I'm not trying to just flat-out knock the book or Sebold--and I hope I don't come across as such.
While I'm not going to pass good/bad judgment, my final opinion of the novel is this: The Almost Moon is a book that really wants to say important things, but it can't get out from under the feeling of wanting to be profound. Sebold tries to create in Helen an emotionally complex character with an existentially important internal life, but, unfortunately, tries to effect this by falling back into BoBo (bourgeois bohemian) syndrome over and over.
For whatever reason, writing about the aristocracy and the peasantry as having meaningful and complex inner lives is commonplace, and done well, over and over again. Yet--with James Joyce, Walker Percy, Marilynne Robinson, and Sinclair Lewis as immediate, stand-out exceptions--writing the same sort of novel about regular ol' middle-class folks is very difficult. Sebold tries her hand at it, and comes up short.
(continuing)
ReplyDeleteI dunno, maybe my weltanschauung prevents me from actually liking the novel. I found the murder not as shocking, but as boorishly selfish and, the more I got to know Helen, perhaps even predictable. And maybe I just can't empathize in any way with a character like that. Maybe my adolescent desires for literature to have the intensity of High Modernism and/or be filled with those heart-breakingly poetic sentences that just make you want to get drunk after you read them still have a stronger hold on me that I'd like to admit. I'm trying to figure out why I didn't like this novel, as I really wanted to like it (especially as I saw preliminary comments from Melly and Kim in the previous post that showed them, whose taste I regard highly, just glowing over the book). And maybe if I would have stuck it out, I would have liked it, and my reservations about it would have been answered or, at the least, engaged. But no matter how much I tried, the book just left me feeling empty at the end of every paragraph, and so I put it down and moved onto something else.
If I were in my own class, I'd probably fail me.
Matt, I was actually referring to Sebold as a bluestocking.
ReplyDeleteI find Helen the character emotionally complex -- because as a child she couldn't have a simple psyche, she's been stunted her whole life, and now works both as a simple character and a complex one -- albeit one who is totally messed up. She spends the entire novel in an emotional denial over her act.
Matty, you actually hit on exactly what made the novel[la] so compelling for me. (I mean aside from the fact that I am a woman, with a terminally ill mother, who watched her grandmother die of Alzheimer's.)
ReplyDeleteI felt transfixed by Sebold's ability to get inside our current era of superficiality over substance and paint a picture perfect landscape of suburban banality complete with a host of characters who seem to revel in their own two-dimensionality. Right down to the artsy, witty, bookish gay man who sees the "Blanche Dubois" Clair fighting her "Stanley" neighbors/emotional demons.
I think you have, Helen, our heroine[?] pegged perfectly, but perhaps that emptiness that you felt is precisely the point of the novel? I thought that Sebold was uncannily able to render us, her readers, as emotionally alienated and stunted as her protagonist. Helen (who I think is supposed to reference our High Modern aspirations of Helen of Troy) is so emotionally retarded that her most loving gesture toward her mother, in her entire life, is to murder her. We, as readers, feel empty because the American landscape these characters represent is void by default. We are unable to connect to the characters because Helen is unable to connect to them.
And in many ways, these characters are us. We hide emotional illness lest we be ostracized, or worse. We hate our neighbors for their imperfections and refuse to build community with them because of our own. We don't talk about poverty, aging, pornography, mental illness, or death except in cursory ways that keep our facades of rationality in tact while we lead lives of quiet desperation.
In my reading of the text, Sebold comments on this blight of middle-class suburban America by creating two-dimensional stereotypical characters whose flaws belie their appropriate characteristics. The beauty is not supposed to be a social cripple, the absent father is not supposed to have a second family complete with celluloid porn-model wife and cardboard cutout children. The American patriarch is certainly not supposed to retreat from his "perfect" home to a property that is condemned.
I'm in the midst of a grading frenzy, more later.
Exactly. One of the things I find comelling about Sebold is that she makes me uncomfortable the entire time. I'm a book-devourer, so I find it unusual that I HAVE to stop reading this book periodically. And then it puts me in a funk. Because I want to know what happens. Even though nothing is happening. It's a beautiful mess.
ReplyDeleteClearly I meant "compelling."
ReplyDeleteI just read Almost Moon for a book club I rarely go to so I have to say I finished it wondering who in this book club would have recommended it bc it is so disturbingly uncomfortable. I can't say I enjoyed it but I did appreciate it because of the Alice Sebold slant of it. She wants us to be uncomfortable and she wants us to decide how far is too far. Can we forgive Helen for a 'mercy killing'? How about when we realize it wasn't exactly a 'mercy killing? Can we forgive Helen her insanity or her stupidity (geesh doesn't she watch CSI and know they are going to check that!?!?). I always finish a book but this one I really just wanted to get it over with already. An interesting subject and subjects but blah I'm not sure she really pulled it off. Have you read A Spot of Bother? Another uncomfortable book but funny is the redeeming quality that makes me recommend it to friends. I don't know this is a weird one.
ReplyDeleteI read this book for a few reasons:
ReplyDelete1) the premise interested me.
2) I wanted to support the online book club
3) I had actually read the opening pages a few months ago and wanted to see if the book delivered
I'm not sure what to say about the novel. I think it delivered some interesting openings for contemplation, but I also felt that there wasn't enough meat on the bones to make a fully-fleshed story.
I find it difficult to engage with a novel when I can't like/respect or at least identify with the main character(s). My interest in the premise stems from the fact that I grew up with an abusive mother and have zero problem with the fact that Helen killed her mother. What I found confusing was the care-giving aspect. I wanted to see if the novel gave something sensical (if not logical or sane) to explain how that would happen. While I've no doubt that it does, in fact, happen, this novel didn't really give enough detail or discussion to make Helen's motives clear. I found myself simply repeatedly asking "really?" whenever Helen half-whined about what she had done for her mother. I simply wanted to know why. If the reason was fear, immaturity, moral superiority, confusion, religiosity, whatever, I wanted to know. Maybe Helen doesn't know, thus we cannot know, but that's not interesting--people who lack the ability to self-reflect aren't interesting in life; they are simply hellish in fiction.
I felt like the atmosphere of the novel (vague, atemporal) was pretense rather than a reflection of any character(s)'s experience of the world. I read it more as affectation that frustratingly refused to give even bare sense to events and feelings. The author seems to have tried to come up with a sense of oppression or unreality and instead came up with an outline rather than a finished story.
As I read I wanted to like Helen or at least find some avenue for respect. I failed. Miserably. There was no there, there, as we say around my house. I kept having to realize that there are people out there like that. The mother had nothing redeeming about her, to me, which I realize is a reaction formed through a heavy bias. However, the daughter also failed as a person (and a character?) because she refused to be a person (or the author failed to draw a compelling portrait). The characters are real enough to be annoying, but not real enough for me to care about them.
If Helen was scarred, I didn't care by the end of the book. If she was wrong, I didn't care. If she "got away with it," I didn't care. I stopped wanting to know what she did and began to find her narration cloying. Again, though, I didn't feel that the author was sophisticated enough to have this work as a reflection on/of anything in the character's life.
Of course, what became the most interesting discussion point for me was the idea of abuse by a mentally ill person. I have dealt with this first-hand in a number of dynamics.
Eventually, I fear that Sebold strayed dangerously close to reinforcing a pernicious idea that somehow, for some reasons at least, abuse is excusable. In this case, I felt that the author tried to build sympathy for the mentally ill mother, if only because Helen was so conflicted about her.
ReplyDeleteI rarely read contemporary fiction. This was an experiment. I will probably not read Sebold again. The entire novel left an unfinished taste in my mouth--as though she forgot to fill in the roughly sketched outline. Ultimately I didn't know enough about anyone to care what happened to them. I had a vague feeling that Helen's husband was smart enough to get out of the situation but he also seemed like an ass and merely a shadow. The girls were also barely present but mentioned frequently.
I think the worst failing here is that I ended up thinking "I don't care. I've seen this and I know it happens and what could have been a serious examination of abuse, mental illness, family, and societal boundaries instead became a rambling bunch of incoherent crap in the head of a person that I am indifferent toward." Indifference is a horrible reaction to a book, but that's where I ended up. I started with interested/hooked, went through boredom and annoyance, and finally just didn't care. We need someone (or many someones) to deal with these complex issues in a way that is honest and real--not in a pseudo-self-aware novel that tries too hard (and thus fails very hard) to be literary.
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ReplyDeletePS Matt said it first and better. I agree wholeheartedly with one exception: I did not find the murder selfish except in so far as Helen waited so long. To wait (and whine) so long and then kill her mother seems almost funny. Of course, I believe completely in removing those people from your life that are toxic to you. That includes a parent. A murder earlier would be more justifiable to me. Of course, my main reason for reading this was to discover what, if any, reasons Sebold could give for a person surviving abuse and then becoming a sole caregiver as the abuse continues. As I stated above, she gave me nothing substantial.
ReplyDeleteRhea, I still need to read, rather than scan, most of what you wrote, but I can address your final question above. It's kinda weird but in some parental abuse cases, the child actually cannot stand to be away from the abusive parent. Especially in cases, like the one in the novel, where the roles switched. The child feels responsible for the out-of-control parent and so feels that she has to protect the parent, which also brings on the intense resentment and subsequent reversal of the abuse. It's a sick cycle.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I enjoy the music selection but it's hard for me to write to it. Is there a way to set it so that it's not on by default? :\
ReplyDeleteI always meant to come back to this but got swept up in the end of the summer term and the beginning of the fall semester.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to reiterate that I love this conversation and I especially like the points that Matt and Rhea brought up though I never adequately addressed them.
I very much enjoy our little electronic book club!