Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i [Hardcover]

Susanna Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 18, 2008

New from the author of In the Cut, the luminous self-portrait of a childhood and adolescence in Hawai’i. Susanna Moore can’t remember the first time she saw the ocean—it has been there for as long as she can remember.  Moore was born in Hawai’i and raised in a paradise of light and color, five days’ ship travel from the U.S. mainland.  As a child she spent endless sun-speckled days in the shade of the palm trees with a bundle of books, the sound of the ocean and the calls of her brothers and sister drifting through the grove. In Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai’i, she weaves reminiscences of her childhood with some of her favorite pieces of literature—excerpts from Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Kon-Tiki, To the Lighthouse, and many others. Although Moore now lives in New York, the sea remains her constant companion. Light Years marks her return to the island world where she walked to school barefoot and explored love as a young girl.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Moore (In the Cut; One Last Look), born in Hawai'i to a mother plagued by mental illness, recalls the two salvations of her childhood—the sea and books. Lying in the shade of a coconut grove that was said to have been planted by the king in the 19th century, she read Robinson Crusoe, Moby-Dick, Treasure Island, To the Lighthouse. She relished passages about the sea, copying her favorites into her journal and eventually excerpting them here. In her own life as well as her voyages through literature, she knew the sea as a playmate, a menace, a protector and an undertaker. In her youth in the 1950s and '60s, just before jet air travel brought mass tourism to the state, the mysteries of islands dotting the waters awed her, as did the alluring mishmash of cultures and classes (Moore's family were members of the haole elite). Now an island dweller of another sort—a New Yorker—she mourns losing her beloved southern seas, once-constant companions for which the Atlantic is no substitute. Moore's premise is intriguing, and her prose elegant, with quick, vivid sketches of her island girlhood; however, with the inclusion of well over 30 passages of seafarers' musings from canon literature, Moore's memoir makes for an excerpt-heavy read that's regrettably light on her personal vision. (Mar.)
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From The New Yorker

When Moore, a novelist, was growing up in Hawaii, in the early fifties, it still took five days to reach the islands by sea from San Francisco. Yet life there for haoles (foreigners) was not unlike that of bluebloods summering in Maine: Moore and her four siblings roamed the landscape at will, while their mother, prone to nervous breakdowns, attempted to outfit them in seersucker shorts. Moore’s recollections are faithful to a child’s purview; she was shocked to learn, later, that "only haoles were allowed to live in the most desirable neighborhoods." Interwoven in the text are excerpts from Darwin and Woolf, among others, although the most memorable line comes from an early-twentieth-century visitor to Hawaii, who reported that nearly no one was left alive who could play the nose flute "as it should be played, to the excruciation of every nerve in a Caucasian body."
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 195 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (February 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802118623
• ISBN-13: 978-0802118622
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,947,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wanting More of Moore, March 26, 2008

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i (Hardcover)

Susanna Moore paints mesmerizing pictures with words. She begins her memoir with "No memory presents itself of my first acquaintance with the sea. It was always there, and I was always in it." What I soon discovered was that the pictures she paints are not so much of herself, but of the place she happened to be at the time, the oceans that surrounded it, and the books that kept her company.

Moore employs an unusual format for this book. Following each brief chapter is at least an equal number of pages filled with excerpts from classic tales of the sea, the constant companions of her youth. In her first chapter she says "One summer when my mother was recovering from a breakdown, we lived on the beach..." but never goes into any detail. Later she writes "I was overcome by the idea of shipwreck. I suspect the unconscious was doing its work. My family, while high-strung, was not a shipwreck quite yet, but I divined its coming." With voyeuristic lust I raced through twenty pages of shipwreck tales from Daniel Defoe and John Fiske, anxious to get back to Susanna's own story, only to find that it never really materializes.

In the next chapter, there is one brief mention of her father being a doctor, but nothing about his role in the family dynamics. Instead I learned about the Hawaiians themselves, and their attitude towards life. Moore tells us "One of my Hawaiian friends insisted that Hawaiians were not working class. The working class wanted televisions and motorboats, but Hawaiians didn't want anything." Following that, I waded through eighteen pages of excerpts from Herman Melville, Charles Darwin, Joseph Conrad and Herodotus, searching for a unifying theme that would tie into the chapter, but never finding one. This was the pattern for the remainder of the book.

Although I came away with a very clear picture of Hawaii, the "ravishing little world...redolent with romance" but also "an hierarchical, snobbish and quietly racist society," my picture of Susanna Moore remained fuzzy, and each chapter left me wanting more. While doing some research on the Internet, I discovered that she wrote an earlier memoir, titled I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai'i. Perhaps I should have read that one first.

by Becky Lane
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too many passages from other authors, not enough of Moore's writing, September 19, 2008

By 

Jessica R. Costello "web geek" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i (Hardcover)

I bought this book because I love Hawaii and wanted to re-visit the islands in my mind. Moore grew up there and wrote about her childhood, but the book falls short when she adds a plethora of passages from other books that influenced her. I wanted an entire book of her writing, but got extras that I wasn't really interested in reading. I ended up flipping past those to the meat of her narrative, and found it to be great. But not enough to fill a book -- hence why others were added. Not a great book as a whole.

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, February 10, 2011

By 

Tiza "Tiza" (ME) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i (Hardcover)

I lived in Hawaii for six years so was very interested in reading this memoir. I found it to be shallow and at times hard to believe that it wasn't exaggerated. I had hoped for more depth and insight into Hawaii during her growing up years in the fifties. It did give me some idea of what it was like but the author, so full of herself and trying so hard to be clever was a real turn-off. It is nothing but another story of a very dysfunctional family. I had so hoped for more.