The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

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Everyone has probably dreamt of killing their mother, suggests Alice Sebold's middle-aged narrator, Helen. But how many have fantasised about "cutting them up into tiny pieces and mailing them to parts unknown"? In the follow-up to her best-selling debut, The Lovely Bones, a woman accustomed to satisfying the needs of her demanding family kills her dementia-afflicted 88-year-old mother. But this is no case of elderly incontinence — Helen's entire life has been bent out of shape by her fragile and abusive mother.

Beginning as a gruesome, solipsistic account of matricide, Sebold's story could have been a gentler rerun of early Ian McEwan. But it unfolds into an engrossing family drama in which a large cast of characters all grieve for their individual losses.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Helen Knightly has spent a lifetime trying to win the love of a mother who had none to spare. And as this electrifying novel opens, she steps over a boundary she never dreamt she would even approach. But while her act is almost unconscious, it also seems like the fulfilment of a lifetime's buried desire. Over the next twenty-four hours, her life rushes in at her as she confronts the choices that have brought her to this crossroads.'Exhilarating, unforgettable ...This is a remarkable novel in which every word is vital, each nuance felt ...Candid, gut-wrenching, at times horribly funny and often beautifully touching ...The genius which guides "The Almost Moon" is its absolute, horrible, multiple truths; its staggering clarity' - Eileen Battersby, "Irish Times". 'As moving as it is unquestionably gripping' Observer 'As gripping as it is strange and wild ...My God, it grips ...I lay awake half the night, feverishly hoping both that it would never end, and that it would all be over soon' - Rachel Cooke, "Evening Standard".