The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

I was a big fan of "The Lovely Bones" and the first thing I love about this book is that it is utterly unlike her that novel in every way. I read it in two days, unable to put it down. Personal experience with my own demented, flawed and raging mother probably makes me partial. She had me on the first page:

"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother's core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers. She had been beautiful when my father met her and still capable of love when I became their late-in-life child, but by the time she gazed up at me that day, none of this mattered."

Helen goes on to make one bad decision after another, none of them easy to read. I winced a lot while reading this. I had a hard time with Helen having sex with her best friend's 30 year old son who had grown up with her own daughter. Eww. I understand the bad reviews and the inability for some to finish this book. It is not for the faint of heart, or the young who perhaps have not had the experience of an aging parent.

She tells us the story of her childhood, family secrets, failed marriage and career as a nude model in flashbacks that butt up against the details of the 24 hour period after she smothers her mother with a towel quite unplanned. Through this we see how her mother's mental illness and the devotion of her father to her mother along with his own problems affected Helen. How family is family, and how that affects the choices we make and how we, in turn, affect our own spouses and children.