The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold

As she did in The Lovely Bones, Sebold demonstrates that authors who have come to grips with their own terrible realities look at life from a video-camera’s perspective. They record it all, exactly the way it is, with all the depths and complexities and contradictions of true life. In her memoir, Lucky, Sebold told of her own rape and its emotional aftermath. She revisited the theme as fiction in The Lovely Bones. In her second novel, The Almost Moon, she turns her relentless eye on the suffocating entrapment of love, and on its liberating strength. Don’t be put off by the theme or by critics who prefer their fiction to be more Disney-like. This is a beautiful, insightful novel, and puts Sebold in the ranks of the best fiction writers of our time.