The Whiteness of Bones
VINTAGE, 2003
In her ravishing and moving second novel, [Moore] tells the story of Mamie Clarke, who sets out to lose herself in New York City. Having only previously known the fragile, magical world of her childhood on the lush Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, Mamie leaves college to visit her sophisticated aunt in New York. With her beautiful and self-destructive younger sister Claire in tow, Mamie must learn to make her way in a world of money, power, sex, and drugs. Moore’s sharp and witty book captures an unforgettable time and place—the Manhattan of the early 80s— and the powerful feelings engendered there.
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“...this is an engrossing novel, profoundly disturbing in its message of feminine guilt, yet satisfying in Mamie's eventual recognition of how to 'purify' her soul.”
Publishers Weekly — February 1989
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“An utterly wonderful novel. . .I envy everyone who enter, for the first time, its world.”
The Washington Post Book World — September 2003
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“A remarkably sly balancing act: a deeply sensual, richly imagined coming-of-age story that manages to use a wickedly satiric portrait of the uppercrust in the Manhattan of the early 1980s.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer — September 2003
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“Ms. Moore possesses a finely tuned radar system for phoniness and pretension, and many of her cameo portraits glitter with a Waugh-like black humor. Indeed, she demonstrates in this novel that she not only has a gift for delineating the tragedies of domestic life...but that she also has a capacity for comic invention, for showing what happens when our vanities run amok.”
The New York Times — March 2020
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“An engrossing, sensual novel whose characters seem to live from the moment of their introduction and whose plot is both believable and satisfying. In short, The Whiteness of Bones is the kind of book you'll read, re-read, and remember.”
West Coast Review of Books — October 2003
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“So evocative you can almost feel the mud between your toes. . . . Moore makes her story as real and mysterious as any island legend, as powerful as the scent of the white ginger flowers.”
Kirkus Reviews, starred — August 2003