Sleeping Beauties

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [8], 231, [1] pages. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Frances Susanna Moore. 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. Susanna Moore (born December 9, 1945) is an American writer and teacher. Born in Pennsylvania but raised in Hawaii, Moore worked as a model and script reader in Los Angeles and New York City before beginning her career as a writer. Her first novel, My Old Sweetheart, published in 1982, earned a PEN Hemingway nomination, and won the Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She followed this with The Whiteness of Bones in 1989, and her third novel, Sleeping Beauties, in 1993. All three of these novels were set in Hawaii and charted dysfunctional family relationships. Moore gained particular critical notice for her fourth novel, In the Cut (1995), which marked a departure from her previous works in both setting and content, concerning a New York City teacher who has a sexual affair with a detective investigating violent murders and dismemberments in her neighborhood. It was adapted into a 2003 feature film of the same name by director Jane Campion. Derived from a Kirkus review: Once upon a time, a young girl, fleeing her wicked stepmother, runs away to live with her mysterious aunt and her blind grandmother and grows up to marry a handsome movie star. But, title notwithstanding, this is not part of any simple fairy tale—it's Moore's third novel, another lush and haunting Hawaiian lament. Clio Lynott, like Moore's earlier heroines is a child cut adrift from her parents and deeply attuned to the mythology and exotic landscape of her homeland. In Clio's case, this affinity for all things Hawaiian is encouraged by her aunt Emma Fitzroy, who teaches her ``the long songs without rhyme called meles, the hulas and oral genealogies; the very history of her passing race.'' It is the weight of all this history that eventually causes Clio to escape into a loveless marriage with Tommy Haywood, a small-minded, big-time Hollywood star. For a while, Clio deceives herself, believing in happily ever after, but soon it becomes clear that not all Prince Charmings are created equal. Ultimately, though, it is Hawaii and all its history—her own history—that draws the aptly named Clio back home to stay with Emma and Mabel, her blind and ancient grandmother. As a heroine, Clio is always vivid. Moore's writing, as ever, almost glows with tropical heat. The Hawaii we see here is enchanting, dangerous, and at the brink of being lost forever. Moore locates it permanently for us- -just midway between fever dream and fairy tale.