Light years - Susanna Moore

No memory presents itself of my first acquaintance with the sea. It was always there, and I was always in it.' This is how Susanna Moore starts her girlhood recollections of Hawai'i, this ravishing little world ... redolent with romance', a beautiful journey down memory lane. The Hawai'i of her memories is an isolated place': Until the end of the 50s, when regular air traffic commenced, the islands could only be reached by boat, a five-day trip from San Franscico
Los Angeles did not exist for us; it was thought to be a little vulgar. It was an hierachical, snobbish and quietly racist society.' But for a child it was heaven on earth, a paradise of light and colour! She spent her seemingly endless, sunshine-filled days with bundles of books in the shade of palm trees. She could hear the sea and read the stories the waves told in the pages of her books. Light Years is a very personal, if unusual travelogue back in time, back to Hawai'i and through the pages of Conrad, Stevenson and Defoe.