For all of her startling lyricism and her capacity to defy genre classifications, Alice Sebold finds herself standing at a rather prosaic book-business crossroads: The "Next Book" after the "Big Book"; the dread "sophomore novel."
Sebold, the author of the 2002 blockbuster "The Lovely Bones," would just as soon build a bridge over this customary moment and quickly step to the next. "Like, wouldn't it be best if there could just be the third book?" she said, quite reasonably, over coffee in the late-lunch hush of a San Francisco restaurant. She and her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold, now call the city home after eight years in Long Beach and three in Ojai. "I went through the idea, 'Well, I could never publish a book again, that's just the simple way! I could just write one and it doesn't have to be published. I can read it. My friends can read it.' " She laughed, looking into the deep dark of her coffee cup. "But it's almost become such a stereotype that you figure, one good review, goal! I'm done. On to No. 3!"
If only: Five years, multiple drafts and two new cities later, Sebold's new book, "The Almost Moon," arrives this week: It's the tale of a decades-long emotional dance between a mother and daughter, Clair and Helen Knightly, taking place in the narrow space between love and hate and madness. It feels drawn in the hues of an unsettled sky.
It's also, of course, the long-anticipated follow-up to her seismic event of a first novel, which sat on the New York Times bestseller list, both hardcover and paper, for 78 weeks. "The Lovely Bones," as many, many people already know, told the story of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who was brutally raped and murdered, but who also beguilingly served as her own story's narrator. From the perch of the afterlife, "her Heaven," she takes measure of what loss means on either side of the divide.
What made its success that much more remarkable (read: newsworthy) was that Sebold, then 39, seemed to have come out of nowhere: a graduate of UC Irvine's MFA graduate program, whose book was sold on the strength of its early pages. While Sebold already had a critically acclaimed memoir under her belt, 1999's "Lucky," about her rape as an 18-year-old -- and its lingering after-effects -- as a fiction writer she was considered to be relatively unknown.
The novel quickly emerged as a ubiquitous read for book groups, train commutes and waiting rooms across the country -- and just as quickly became an easy target for certain members of the literati. But no matter: The book still has a strong, steady pulse -- with more than 5 million copies now in print and a film adaptation to be directed by Peter Jackson going into production in a few weeks. All of which is why, with "The Almost Moon," Sebold has girded herself for come-what-may.
Plans are big -- national television and major print advertising, large-venue appearances across the country and a quick jaunt overseas. But early word isn't across-the-board glowing: along with some positive or mixed reviews, a few out-and-out sharply barbed pans have hurtled in from high places. It's been called "unremittingly bleak," "grim and grimmer," "dark." While Library Journal calls it a "daring, devastating novel," Publishers Weekly has deemed it "disappointing," a "sophomore effort not in line with her talent."
Sebold understands the vagaries of the business, how the scale can tip. "I know that there are going to be people who are going to be put off by this book just because the last book did so well," she said, "and people are going to be put off from it because they liked the other book. These are the things that are outside of our -- one's -- control." So, for the moment, as for reviews, she's not doing more than skimming them quickly. "Both Glen and I have this Baby Bird/Big Bird thing where he'll look at it and kind of just say: 'This is what you need to know,' " It's better to have read them, otherwise I'll just imagine that they are worse than they really are."
Over the edge
Undeniably, Sebold knows her way around imagination's dark corridors. "The Almost Moon" also travels down emotionally treacherous and murky passageways; its narrative, like "Lovely Bones," is set in motion by a violent act. The book's emotionally burdened middle-age protagonist, Helen, has long struggled to see herself, and to be seen. She works as an artist's model, sitting nude for students at the local college who sketch her into some semblance of being. Helen moves through much of her life like a somnambulist, still puzzling over the debris of her failed marriage, fetching and caring for others, eclipsed by the vast, variable needs of her mercurial mother, until she is suddenly pushed over the edge and does the unthinkable -- kills her aged, mentally unstable mother.
