Career
Her first book,, was published when she was 18 and became an international bestseller. At the time, it was often associated with Bonjour Tristesse, a novel published two years earlier in France by 18-year-old Françoise Sagan. Since its publication in 1956, appeared in 11 languages, including French, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Swedish, and German.
According to the Bantam paperback edition, the book went through 11 printings in the United States. and sold over one million copies. was republished in paperback and e-book editions in June 2013, with a new foreword by author Emma Straub.
Gained notoriety for its frank depiction of sexuality at a time when 18-year-old girls were not expected to read about such topics, let alone write about them. The book portrays a privileged and jaded set who drink heavily and pride themselves on their sexual sophistication.
After an unrequited crush on one of her boarding-school teachers leads to heartbreak, Courtney beds a bisexual Hollywood actor and a dissolute European aristocrat living out of a New York hotel. As Robert Clurman noted in The New York Times Book Review "..not very long ago, it would have been regarded as shocking to find girls in their teens reading the kind of books they’re now writing.” The book also includes discussion of homosexuality, alcoholism, gender roles and sexual exploration that was, for the era, uncommon.
In 1958, Moore married Adam Kanarek, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish origin who had "very little in common with the residents of Beverly Hills, the Westchester horse set, and the habitues of "21" and the Stork Club." Moore went on to write four more novels, including Pigeons of Saint Mark"s Place, The Exile of Suzy-Q, and The Horsy Secretariat, but none of these enjoyed the success of the first.
Dan Visel speculates that this may be partially explained by the change in the tone of the later books: ".. what stands out most about The Horsy Secretariat is the unrelenting darkness it presents. In its depiction of depression, it prefigures The Bell Jar, which would be published the next year.
Mud is never far from Brenda’s mind.
She sees herself sinking further into a despoiled adult world where nothing can save her."
Other reviewers have noted, in the depiction of depression and suicide in "Chocolates," and the frantic mood swings of Brenda in "The Horsy Secretariat," intimations of a bipolar disorder, for which diagnosis and treatment were at the time nearly non-existent. In 1963 Moore gave birth to a son, Kevin.
Nine months later, in 1964, working on her final, unpublished novel Kathy on the Rocks, she committed suicide by gunshot.
