My Old Sweetheart
VINTAGE, 1997
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.
Order the Book:
A PEN Hemingway nomination and winner of the Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
-
“"My Old Sweetheart'' is filled with memorable scenes...They also make one look forward to whatever Miss Moore will write when she gets her narrative technique under more secure control.”
The New York Times — November 1982
-
“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
-
“I can't recall another novel like this about mothers and daughters. . . . Lily's mysterious, half-told tale delighted and touched me.”
The Village Voice
-
“At once exotic and familiar, richly evocative and elegantly simple.”
Newsweek