YOU CAN'T TOP PIGS WITH PIGS

Gentle Readers,

I read The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold, and I pronounce it worthy.

I saw some rather disparaging reviews of this book that said it's not as good as Sebold's amazing first novel, The Lovely Bones. Well, The Lovely Bones is amazing, and I don't think it's fair to expect any writer to produce The Lovely Bones every time she sits down at the computer. Maybe that's what kept Harper Lee from writing (or maybe she wrote and didn't publish) another book after To Kill A Mockingbird.

I read an interview (which she rarely grants) with Nelle Harper Lee some years back in which she said she didn't write another book because how could she ever do anything better than Mockingbird? When the country fell in love with Walt Disney's cartoon of The Three Little Pigs (depression-era folks took Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf to heart), many people wanted Disney to make a sequel.

He adamantly refused.

Disney said, You can't top pigs with pigs.

So let's not expect Alice Sebold to write The Lovely Bones every time. Let's appreciate The Almost Moon for what it is, and what it is is a novel that's hard to put down.

First sentence: "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."

Well, you just have to keep reading after that. My only negative comment about the book is that I found the conclusion a bit anticlimactic.

I also recommend Alice Sebold's memoir Lucky, and the movie of The Lovely Bones is . . . lovely.

Happy Reading, Gentle Readers.

Love,

Lola