The Almost Moon
by Alice Sebold
Picador, HK$280
'When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily,' is the bold opening line of Alice Sebold's new novel, The Almost Moon. With this chilling confession, any doubt about the author's ability to create a narrative as compelling as that of The Lovely Bones - in which a murdered daughter observes her family's continuing life from heaven - is quickly allayed.
Narrator Helen Knightly, at 49, is a professional figure model who has spent the two decades since her father's death acting as her mother's keeper. Dementia has taken over Clair Knightly, a long-faded beauty and agoraphobe, and one day, after another one of her mother's 'accidents', Helen suffocates her with a hand towel.
It was only putting her out of her misery, Helen thinks. And then she panics - it was also murder.