The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold

Paperback, 2008

Call number

FIC SEB

Collection

Publication

Back Bay Books (2008), Edition: Reprint, 291 pages

Description

Having set aside her own life in her support of her parents, husband, and children, Helen Knightly confronts the realities of the choices that were imposed upon her during a harrowing twenty-four-hour period of death and revelation.

Media reviews

5 more
If you welcome the unreal disjunction between killing your mother and reflecting afterward how lucky you are compared with the children of the dead, “uncared for” mothers in Rwanda and Afghanistan, then this book will make you clap your hands with joy. If you find the idea that mothers shape
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their children’s “whole” lives original rather than simultaneously banal and puerilely overstated, then Barnes & Noble, here you come! This novel is so morally, emotionally and intellectually incoherent that it’s bound to become a best seller.
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...in The Lovely Bones the victim is young and innocent and the killer serial; in The Almost Moon the victim is old and hurtful, the killer barely a murderer at all. There's a similar alertness to the ways in which everyone's a victim and everyone has murderous feelings, and outlandish acts again
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come out of a need to love and feel loved.... The excess of craziness means we don't have, paradoxically, an intimate sense of what Helen is like: she's sardonic, practical, controlled - but then none of those things, just her crazy parents' daughter.
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Sebold has an Olympic pole-vaulter’s instinct for going over the top; occasionally my eyes were rolling so hard I had to hold the book directly over my head to keep reading... Part of The Almost Moon’s diminished power might be that, since (and partly because of) the wild success of The Lovely
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Bones, this genre—the American suburban gothic family dysfunction saga—has become even more of a tired pop-cultural reflex than it was before.
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Sebold reveals the family's fractured past (insane, agoraphobic mother; tormented father, dead by suicide) and creates a portrait of Clair that resembles Sebold's own mother as portrayed in her memoir, Lucky . While Helen has clearly suffered at her mother's hands, the matricide is woefully
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contrived, and Helen's handling of the body and her subsequent actions seem almost slapstick. Sebold can write, that's clear, but her sophomore effort is not in line with her talent.
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Sebold may have her finger on the pulse of a certain middle-aged zeitgeist here, but her navel-gazing central character is more tedious than tragic.

User reviews

LibraryThing member anterastilis
Hmm.

So, this is Alice Sebold of The Lovely Bones fame. Her new book (her sophomore novel) is similar in tone to The Lovely Bones, but very different in character and plot. So much so, that it's gotten me worried.

See, once upon a time, I loved a book called The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
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Actually, I'll go as far as to say it's one of my all-time favorite books. It concerns five Classical History students at a small, liberal arts college in the Northeast. The students are a secretive bunch, and they get it in their minds to hold an honest-to-Gods Bacchanal. Things go awry, with the force and irony of any good Greek tragedy. I loved it with every fiber of my Classical-history-major being, and I waited impatiently (for ten freaking years!) for her second novel to be released. And when it was, I bought it off the shelf with barely a glance.

It was about a 10-year-old girl in the deep south in the late 1970's. Same tone...but where were my history-obsessed college students? The indulgent and inspiring professor? Where were the people that I related to, Donna Tartt? What did you do with them, and who the hell is this precocious kid, Harriet?

No matter how good of a novel it was (and it did get widespread acclaim), I was disappointed and missed Henry, Bunny, Richard, Charles, Camilla, and Francis...I missed that to which I could personally relate.

So, why am I bringing this up NOW? What does this have to do with Alice Sebold?

I've taken many requests for The Almost Moon at the library. I'd have to say that 2/3 of them are from teenage girls. These are the people that clutch their well-worn copy of The Lovely Bones to their chests and sigh "Susie Salmon!".* I think that The Lovely Bones hit a nerve that
Lurlene McDaniel has been plucking at for years: that of the tragic teenage girl. Stories that hormonal young women devour whilst sobbing into their pillows.

The Almost Moon is about the tumultuous relationship between a woman in her eighties (Clair) and her daughter (Helen). It takes place over a 24-hour period, and consists mostly of flashbacks to Helen's youth, and what it was like growing up with Clair as a mother. It's a tragic tale of frustration and losing control - on both of their parts. It's a wretched story of two lives that revolve around each other, poisoning each other. I skimmed parts of it because I just wasn't digging the melodrama. There are parts of this book that are truly baffling: the things that Clair and Helen do, the way that Sebold writes (there are some god-awful comparisons and squick-worthy observations), and how she jumps around haphazardly from scene to scene, character to character, concept to concept. I didn't enjoy it. It was a huge disappointment.

So, what's the point of this super-long review?

I think that Alice Sebold is going to confuse, and then lose a significant part of her readership. Now, I'm not saying that she should have pumped out another 30 *sigh* "Susie Salmon!" novels. She's an established author now, she can write whatever the hell she wants and we'll buy it. But I can't help feeling concerned for those teenage girls who are impatiently waiting for me to return the book so that THEY can read it with their tissues handy. I think that Alice Sebold will lose them after the first chapter. I just don't think they'll be able to relate to a 60-year-old woman's dealings with her 80-year-old mother in the same way as they did with *sigh* "Susie Salmon!". I feel really badly for these girls that are going to get all excited about reading a new book by a cool author...and wind up with this lumbering, cringe-worthy tale.

This book is going to surprise a LOT of people...and not in a good way. Pass it by if you loved The Lovely Bones. I don't want you to sully the experience of reading that book by reading this one, knowing that somehow they came out of the same mind.

* Susie Salmon is the main character in The Lovely Bones, the one with whom the female teen population is almost universally enamored.
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LibraryThing member april85fool
What the heck was that? I pushed myself through this book continuously thinking "it must get better" but it never did. The writing style was great but the plot line, to say the least was not for me. The most ironic moment? Finding this book on a "Suggestions for Mother's Day" table at a major
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bookstore. Sure, here you go, happy mother's day mom, this is what I want to do... It's every mother's dream, :/
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LibraryThing member bhowell
Ms. Sebold's new book has been receiving some harsh comments from the critics. They are, in my view, quite mistaken. In fact , The Almost Moon is far superior to her previous books and shows a real growth in the author's skills as a writer. It tells the same kind of story but this time we have a
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bit of an intellectual challenge. It was very easy to lose your heart to a murdered child and to a young woman who was brutally beaten and assaulted. The choice was clear. Hence everything the author wrote was right, just so right, achingly true. Its popularity with people who are not great readers was assured.( I don't mean to be a snob but you know what I mean)
The Almost Moon presents us with a more complex "victim" and it seem some readers are now sulking because they have to look at ethics as a balancing of interests and no one has given them the answer. Who is the victim in any event, Helen or her mother? Helen smothers her elderly mother to death and then we are taken back in history. We are given "what came before". It is a tragic history of her mother's mental illness and its effect on a growing child. The scene where our teenage Helen faces down vigilante neighbours to protect her mother is heartbreaking. We also realize that Helen has in many ways given up her life and marriage to protect and care for her mother, just as her father had done prior to his suicide. He got out but that left Helen. Does that justify her act? Was her act simply inevitable and not a moral choice at all? I don't know the answer. My inclination is that of course it was wrong and there must have been some other choice available. I don't happen to know what that would be nor do I know whether I would have even stayed to care for such a parent for decades. Well, I'll be honest. I would not. So we each have to think a little and how is that a bad thing?

I also noticed that Ms Sebold exhibits a keen sense of humour in this book which was not evident in her earlier works. All of this suggests that her next effort will be even better and I look forward to it.
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LibraryThing member JadedJenn
I thought this book was very disappointing. I thought it was very boring and I did not connect with the main character. I understood her hatred of her mother and her desire to kill her. What I didn't understand was her inability to escape her mother. She made it seem like that was her mother's
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fault. Really, it wasn't. She could have left her mother at any time. No one would fault her for it. By the end of the book I wanted Helen to kill herself.
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LibraryThing member Kirstie_Innes-Will
I found this book hideously sensationalist and offensive. Admittedly I also found 'The Lovely Bones' gimmicky - but this book features a far more hideous protagonist and it revels in confronting the reader with grotesquery. Possibly cathartic if you fantasise about killing your mother ... possibly
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not even then.
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LibraryThing member cranmergirl
This is a story about mental illness and its victims. Helen Knightly smothers her elderly mother with a pillow in an impetuous moment after being unable to figure out how to go about cleaning her mother who has just soiled herself. The story obviously goes much deeper. Helen is the product of two
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less-than-stable individuals. Helen's mother, Clair, suffered from a severe case of agoraphobia throughout her adult life. After an incident where a neighborhood boy is killed by a hit-and-run driver, Clair (although not the driver) is demonized by the townsfolk for not comforting the boy in his dying moments. It comes to a head when a group of neighbors shows up to confront Clair and instead, Helen literally takes a punch for her mother, who is cowering inside the house. From there, it goes from bad to worse when Helen's father finally succeeds in committing suicide by shooting himself in the head in front of his wife. After reading all of this, the reader is feeling quite sympathetic towards poor Helen. After all, what chance did she have growing up in THAT household?? I think the author did an admirable job of making the reader really care about the protagonist and her dilemma. Unfortunately, I would have preferred a more definitive ending. Ultimately, it is left up to the reader to decide what happens to Helen and everyone in her life.
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LibraryThing member brianinbuffalo
One review aptly branded Sebold's work "grim and grimmer." Others have dubbed it "dark" and "harsh."
Sadly, I have to add "disappointing" to the list of descriptions.
Perhaps "The Almost Moon" was torpedoed by my own high expecations. I loved Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" on many levels. I can't say
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the same for her latest effort.
One reviewer noted that "The Almost Moon" has a greater complexity to it than the earlier book. That's probably true. Still, complexity doesn't necessarily convey superiority.
The book begins with an intriguing and timely premise. It's widely-trumpeted shocking opening sets the tone and builds early interest. But my interest waned by the time I was one-third through the book.
Don't get me wrong. Sebold is an excellent writer who explores some thought-provoking themes in this work, including the complexity of relationships. But in my estimation, it just doesn't measure up to "The Lovely Bones."
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LibraryThing member Aubbie82
I would give "The Almost Moon" 1/2 a star if I could. I loved "The Lovely Bones", so I thought I would love this book, too. After trying to read this for several months, I've only made it to page 35. Unfortunately, I did not know about this site before buying the book. After reading the reviews
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quoting a disturbing line on page 44, I don't want to go any further. I will be selling this back to the book store.
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LibraryThing member suetu
Alice Sebold is dark. Her first wildly bestselling novel dealt with the murder of a child. This novel deals with matricide. It’s laid out plainly in the opening line, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.” Me, personally, I’ve never thought about murdering my mother.
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And yet, I totally understood how this previously law-abiding citizen wound up in the situation she was in. Sebold had me with her every step of the way.

The entire novel actually takes place in just about 24 hours. Forty-nine-year-old Helen is paying a visit to her difficult and declining 88-year-old mother Claire. In a moment of weakness (Or is it mercy?) Helen snaps. She suffocates her mother. This is horrible, but I believe most readers will understand why it happened. Helen had been a virtual slave to her mother for years. Their love/hate relationship is as complex as they come. Although the events of the novel unfold in the course of a day, through flashbacks and memories we really get the story of Helen’s relationship with both of her parents as well as her ex-husband, friends, and now adult daughters. Helen is a product of her upbringing. She’s become what she had to become. So, when she snaps and kills her mother, I understood it.

But from that one pivotal event, she does everything wrong. She compounds her mistake in truly horrible ways. It is the ultimate downward spiral, and watching it is like watching a train wreck—you can’t look away. And I couldn’t stop turning pages fast enough. You know it will end badly as she pulls others into her nightmare, but you just have to see how it ends. Now I know, and I find it a bit haunting.

This is that rare and most wonderful of things, a literary page-turner. The writing is fantastic and the plot compulsive. I saw Sebold speak to a room full of booksellers in June. She said, “This is what you’re all wanting to know: Does the follow-up to The Lovely Bones suck?” Let me tell you, it does not suck. Sebold’s sophomore effort is a triumph. Read it.
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LibraryThing member UtopianElle
After loving the Lovely Bones, I waited in near desperation for Alice Sebold's second novel. I was gravely disappointed. The main character wasn't likable or even very interesting. There was just nothing good to hang onto in the plot. Some writers only have one good novel in them, and Alice Sebold
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just might fall into that category.
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LibraryThing member WeeziesBooks
Alice Sebold's book "The Lovely Bones" was wonderful. Though the subject of the book was difficult, it was an easy book to read. I was hoping for the same quality in the book “Almost Moon”; but it wasn’t in the same category at all. I had really hard time finishing this novel. In this book
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Helen, a middle-aged woman grows tired of caring for her very difficult and sick elderly mother. She takes steps to end this burden for herself. For me, the book had little redeeming value. The writing was not excellent, the plot was too simple and the characters underdeveloped and very unlikeable and it did not hold my attention.

I wanted to love this book and I had been looking forward to it’s publication; however, I could not get into the theme or flow of ideas from the very beginning. This review is difficult because I would give away the central them if I explained why I so disliked the selfish and self indulgent Helen. Suffice it to say the actions she took were horrible and cruel and just too off putting for my taste. I find it hard to believe that the two books were written by the same author. I hope Sebold’s next book is better for I will give her another try but I cannot recommend this book.
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LibraryThing member VykiC37
After this book, I hate to be so ugly about it, but I will probably not read another of her books. The only reason I read it all the way through was because I hate to have unfinished books and I was hoping that it would get better by then end. I found this book to be a bit pointless and it had no
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real ending. I wouldn't recommend this book and was very disappointed.
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LibraryThing member KKovach
Actually liked this one better than "Lovely Bones". Yes, it was kinda morbid. The writing was absolutley beautiful, I really felt for the lead character Helen. There is a lesson to be learned from this, Mental Illness spands generations and is passed down through the ages. Scary if you think about
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it,but interesting.
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LibraryThing member KAzevedo
This story is about the mental illness of an entire family, not just a mother. Everyone in the family is a victim, something I think many of those who have reviewed "The Almost Moon" on LT do not understand. Since it is written from the point of view of the daughter, Helen, it is easy to become
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lost in her memories of her childhood and miss the illness of her father, whom she idolizes. It is a horrifying, dark, and achingly sad book, but compelling, especially for anyone who has experienced caring for a mentally ill parent. The big question for me is, "Why does she stay, why does she continue?"; the same question I have had for myself. But the second important question is, "How could she not stay?"
This is an important book for anyone who is honest enough to admit their love/hate relationship with a parent, and who can relate to the desire to end the suffering.
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LibraryThing member ladybug74
I enjoyed this book! I thought it was horrible that the main character killed her mother, despite everything that she had put her through. I found myself wanting her to get away with it, though I can't imagine how someone could do something like that. Then there was the whole situation with her
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best friend's son---very strange. When she said that she was waiting to see who in the family would inherit the mental illness, I was thinking that she did.
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LibraryThing member ronda73ca
This book was odd in places and really shows the dichotomy and struggle between loving and hating someone at the same time. The book can be disturbing in that the actions of the main character will seen questionable to some people, but I liked the way the feelings and memories moved from between
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love and hate depending on which memory or person (dad or mom) was within the memory. I also liked how the book was left a "little bit open" at the end so that you can form your own opinion as to what the consequences would become.
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LibraryThing member bkswrites
Dark is one thing, but give me a reason to read

I couldn't get past the first quarter of this book, and neither could most members of the book group that selected it. I'm not complaining about the darkness of the story. I'd love to read a really skilled story of mental illness and its effect on a
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family. But even in less than 2 of 8 discs, I simply hated the murdered mother, and hated the murdering daughter who narrates the book. No one seems to have any redeeming or sympathetic qualities. There were cameo appearances by a couple of good-seeming neighbors, but they were cardboard cutouts, as if Sebold cannot imagine a good-hearted, caring soul.

I had a difficult time putting together all the flashback information (and flashbacks do sort of violate the "24 hours" structure of the book). But the worst part was that I simply didn't care what I wasn't getting; I wanted only to get on to something less dreadful, or something that at least I could learn from. I also particularly resented Sebold's characterization, from the opening page, of the mother as a dementia patient. Clearly, the woman had been psychotic for most of her adult life. It's unfair to the many families that suffer through more "normal" diagnoses of dementia.

I feel sad for this writer who seems to be getting nothing herself from the practice of her art and certainly is giving this reader nothing. I would worry even more if I were her mother, or her daughter. I hope she can find some healing and hope and win me over with her next book.
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LibraryThing member knielsen83
Well, I can't say I'm impressed. The book was a tumble of thoughts from the main character, interupting the story line consistantly and the ending was just horrid. Horrible depressing and really just lacking, I can't really say it's worth the trouble reading.
LibraryThing member lalalibrarian
I gave up around chapter 6. I was listening to the audio book and getting pretty depressed by the content. I think if I'd been reading it I may have been able to stick with it longer, but hearing the main character kill her mother and contemplate cutting her up was too much for me to handle while
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driving.

too bad b/c I loved The Lovely Bones and Lucky.
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LibraryThing member tundra
The first chapter of this book was horrible. After reading Lovely Bones, I was expecting something fantastic but this book falls far short. After reading some reviews of other readers, I decided reading more would be a waste of time.
LibraryThing member C.Vick
This book really wigged me out.

I took it from a friend who wouldn't finish it because it was, and I quote, "Really, really gross." As someone who has always had more than a passing interest in the morbid, though, I was sure I could take it.

Boy, my friend was right. I made it considerably further
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along than she did before giving it up, but the whole story just kept getting more and more appalling.

I guess the head of a madwoman really isn't a place I wanted to be.
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LibraryThing member diovival
I picked this book out to complete one of TNBBC summer reading challenge tasks. It was painful to read. I literally forced myself to stay awake so I could finish this god awful book because I dreaded the thought of waking up the next morning with more of this book to read. I'm so glad it's finally
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over! I wish I could scrape the memory of this story from my brain.

Do you have enemies? Frenemies? Is there someone you would like to disengage from your life but you don't know how? Alice Sebold has created the solution to all your problems! Simply gift them this book and notice with sweet satisfaction as they give you a wide berth from then on.

Never in my life have I disliked a book so much. This saddens me.
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LibraryThing member hellonicole
Having read and enjoyed both The Lovely Bones and Lucky, I went into The Almost Moon anticipating an enjoyable, albeit dark, read. Instead I was instantly disturbed, and unable to even finish the book. It takes a lot for me to simply walk away from a book, but The Almost Moon had it.
LibraryThing member carolcarter
If you are going to read Alice Sebold you must prepare to put everything on hold. This is why her newest book was met with such enthusiasm by those of us who loved her earlier books. No disappointment with The Almost Moon. It pulled me in right from the first page. Of course a book that begins with
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matricide would have that effect. The beauty of Sebold's writing is that she doesn't judge her characters and nor do you. She presents them with their histories and lets the tale unfold in its unique way.

The Almost Moon is the story of Helen, blessed with two mentally ill parents, and her struggle to exist and be seen. That she has minimal luck with this should come as no surprise and we are privy throughout the book to her own thoughts on her shortcomings. The book was, for me personally, uncannily similar to my own life which makes me realize all the more the talent Sebold has in conveying the incredible rage that stays with you for life. She is also more than adept at describing the complicated dance of love and hate that can happen between parents and children. Like The Lovely Bones, Sebond's newest is a harrowing tale. It is, nontheless, beautiful to read.
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LibraryThing member LisaLynne
I picked up the audio version of this book and I didn't even make it through the first disk. I knew the premise of the book - a woman kills her aged and demented mother. Surprisingly, I found that I really didn't want to hear about her trying to cover up her crime. I didn't want to hear her
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justifications for the killing. This wasn't a mercy killing, it wasn't an overdose of morphine or pulling out a feeding tube. This was smothering her mother with a towel while her mom struggled and fought and she stared into her eyes. I don't want to hear her try and get my sympathy for that.
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Pages

291

ISBN

0316067369 / 9780316067362

Lexile

870L
Page: 5.3025 seconds