cover image The Whiteness of Bones

The Whiteness of Bones

Susanna Moore. Penguin Books, $12.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-14-013020-1

Mamie Clarke grows up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, desperate for the attention of her remote mother. Naive and inexperienced at 21, Mamie goes to live with her Aunt Alysse in the decadent milieu of the idle rich in 1980s Manhattan. ``This is an engrossing novel, profoundly disturbing in its message of feminine guilt,'' declared PW. (Feb.)