Sleeping Beauties

by Susanna Moore

Overview

Like her much-acclaimed previous novels, Susanna Moore's Sleeping Beauties is set in Hawaii, whose shimmering beauty and melancholy traditions are both seductive and dangerously hard to leave. Or so they prove for Clio, who marries a well-known Hollywood actor—providing her with the promise of escape from the entanglements of island life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679755395
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/28/1994
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries Series
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.15(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels The Life of Objects, The Big Girls, One Last Look, In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties, The Whiteness of Bones, and My Old Sweetheart, and two books of nonfiction, Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai’i and I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai’i. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Moore's impressive third novel portrays a Hawaiian ``island girl'' who flees her ancestral home to marry a Hollywood movie star. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Once again Moore explores the old families of Hawaii through the eyes of their young women. The protagonist, aptly named Clio, is burdened by history; she feels the weight of ancient tradition, the responsibilities of being an ``island girl,'' and the tensions within her splintered family. Often a runaway, she flees into marriage with a film star who attracts her partly because he lives only for the moment. Their violent breakup propels her back to the islands, where she unexpectedly finds love and the strength to reconcile past, present, and future within an independent spiritual and sexual identity. Characters from earlier novels ( My Old Sweetheart, Houghton, 1982; The Whiteness of Bone , LJ 1/89) make cameo appearances in Clio's story, which unfolds in spare, revealing dialog and evocative description. This is prose to be savored.-- Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.

Library Journal