Background
Moore was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and grew up in Hawaii.
( The dramatic history of America's tropical paradise Th...)
The dramatic history of America's tropical paradise The history of Hawaii may be said to be the story of arrivals―from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor 18,000 feet below, the first hardy seeds that over millennia found their way to the islands, and the confused birds blown from their migratory routes, to the early Polynesian adventurers who sailed across the Pacific in double canoes, the Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines, and the British navigators in search of a Northwest Passage, soon followed by pious Protestant missionaries, shipwrecked sailors, and rowdy Irish poachers escaped from Botany Bay―all wanderers washed ashore, sometimes by accident. This is true of many cultures, but in Hawaii, no one seems to have left. And in Hawaii, a set of myths accompanied each of these migrants―legends that shape our understanding of this mysterious place. In Paradise of the Pacific, Susanna Moore, the award-winning author of In the Cut and The Life of Objects, pieces together the elusive, dramatic story of late-eighteenth-century Hawaii―its kings and queens, gods and goddesses, missionaries, migrants, and explorers―a not-so-distant time of abrupt transition, in which an isolated pagan world of human sacrifice and strict taboo, without a currency or a written language, was confronted with the equally ritualized world of capitalism, Western education, and Christian values.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374536171/?tag=2022091-20
("Susanna Moore's novel astonished me--one of those brilli...)
"Susanna Moore's novel astonished me--one of those brilliant objects that come along only rarely, all light on clear water, and then one realizes the faster currents underneath, the terrible swiftness of sex and time. " --Joan Didion In this mesmerizing novel, Susanna Moore displays a naturalist's eye for the landscape of her native Hawaii and an uncanny sensitivity to the despairing love between mothers and daughters. Lily Shields grows up amid the fragrance of night-jasmine and burning sugar cane, and the heady atmosphere of her mother's madness. For if Anna Shields is an island unto herself--fragile, glamorous, and fearfully needy--Lily is the bridge that connects her to reality. But now Lily is a young woman and a mother herself, self-exiled from Hawaii but still attached to Anna's tragedy. And as she tries to untangle those threads of love and loyalty, Moore gives us a novel of shimmering beauty and sadness. My Old Sweetheart is a small classic, perfectly formed and mysteriously wise. "Susanna Moore is a gifted and compelling novelist . . . in possession of her own unique voice." --The New York Times Book Review "I can't recall another novel like this about mothers and daughters. . . . Lily's mysterious, half-told tale delighted and touched me." --Susan Lydon, Village Voice
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679776419/?tag=2022091-20
("Remarkable, erotic, intelligent, and daring."--Vanity Fa...)
"Remarkable, erotic, intelligent, and daring."--Vanity Fair By day, Frannie teaches her writing students about irony and language in all its nuance, eccentricity, and unspoken meaning. By night, she compiles a secret dictionary of street slang . . . and takes chances. One night in the basement of a bar she walks in on an intimate moment between a man and a woman. The man's face is shadowed in the darkness, but she will forever remember the tattoo on the inside of his left wrist; the feeling of his eyes on her. She will remember long after the first brutal murder rocks her neighborhood . . . long after she is propelled into a sexual liaison that tests the limits of her safety and desires, as she begins a terrifying descent into the dark places that reside deep within her. Newly repackaged in its first trade paperback edition, In the Cut is a masterfully written thriller that will keep readers tense with its mounting sense of terror. "Brilliant. A beautifully crafted story of obsession, sex, violation . . . gut-twisting . . . goes deliberately too far, climaxing in one of the most authentically shocking endings in recent fiction."--The San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452281296/?tag=2022091-20
(Calcutta in 1836: an uneasy mix of two worlds–the patient...)
Calcutta in 1836: an uneasy mix of two worlds–the patient, implacably unchangeable India and the tableau vivant of English life created of imperialism’s desperation. This is where Lady Eleanor, her sister Harriet, and her brother, Henry–the newly appointed Governor-General of the colony–arrive after a harrowing sea journey “from Heaven, across the world, to Hell.” But none of them will find India hellish in anticipated ways, and some–including Harriet and, against her better judgment, Eleanor–will find an irresistible and endlessly confounding heaven. In Lady Eleanor–whose story is based on actual diaries–we have a keenly intelligent and observant narrator. Her descriptions of her profoundly unfamiliar world are vivid and sensual. The stultifying heat, the sensuous relief of the monsoon rains, the aromas and colors of the gardens and marketplaces, the mystifying grace and silence of the Indians themselves all come to rich life on the page. When she, Harriet, Henry, and ten thousand soldiers and servants make a three-year trek to the Punjab from Calcutta under Henry’s failing leadership, Eleanor’s impressions of the people and landscape are deepened, charged by her own revulsion and exaltation: “My life,” she says, “once a fastidious nibble, has turned into an endless disorderly feast.” Harriet, whose passivity conceals a dazed openness to the true India, and Henry, with his frightened adherence to the crumbling ideals of empire, become foils to Eleanor’s slow but inexorable seduction. Historically precise, gorgeously evocative, banked with the heat of unbidden desires, One Last Look is a mesmerizing tale of the complex lure of the exotic and the brazen failure of imperialism–both political and personal. It is a powerful confirmation of Susanna Moore’s remarkable gifts.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679450416/?tag=2022091-20
(In her ravishing and moving second novel, the bestselling...)
In her ravishing and moving second novel, the bestselling author of In the Cut tells the story of Mamie Clarke, who sets out to lose herself in New York City. Having only previously known the fragile, magical world of her childhood on the lush Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, Mamie leaves college to visit her sophisticated aunt in New York. With her beautiful and self-destructive younger sister Claire in tow, Mamie must learn to make her way in a world of money, power, sex, and drugs. Moore’s sharp and witty book captures an unforgettable time and place—the Manhattan of the early 80s— and the powerful feelings engendered there.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400075041/?tag=2022091-20
Moore was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and grew up in Hawaii.
Her memoir, I Myself Have Seen lieutenant: The Myth of Hawaii gives the reader deep insight into a life in Hawaii other than that presented by tourist brochures. During May to August 2009, Susanna Moore was Writer-in-Residence at Australia"s University of Adelaide. Moore worked for a while in Los Angeles in the late 1960s as Warren Beatty"s assistant.
( The dramatic history of America's tropical paradise Th...)
("Susanna Moore's novel astonished me--one of those brilli...)
(Calcutta in 1836: an uneasy mix of two worlds–the patient...)
(In her ravishing and moving second novel, the bestselling...)
("Remarkable, erotic, intelligent, and daring."--Vanity Fa...)