cover image Chocolates for Breakfast

Chocolates for Breakfast

Pamela Moore. Harper Perennial, $14.99 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-224691-2

Though the vernacular is straight out of the 1960s, the coming-of-age themes in the reissue of this classic from Moore, who died in 1964 at the age of 26, are timeless. Courtney Farrell, the 15-year-old daughter of a Hollywood screen star and Manhattanite father, leaves boarding school to live with her mother in L.A. Beautiful and more adult than child, Courtney rubs elbows and sips martinis with the Hollywood elite. Soon she loses her virginity to Barry Cabot, an effeminate 28-year-old womanizing actor. After enjoying “the marvelous luxury of her own young body,” the inevitable heartbreak devastates Courtney, and she begins cutting to deal with her pain. Eventually, her mom’s acting career takes a nosedive, and they’re forced to move to New York, where Courtney searches for authenticity in a sea of spoiled rich kids and disaffected parents, who have money in abundance but little happiness. Shocking for its time, Moore’s debut entranced a generation of teen girls bumbling through adolescence (and even takes credit for popularizing the name Courtney for girls), and will surely continue to resonate with audiences for years to come. (July)