MY OLD SWEETHEART <i> by Susanna Moore (Penguin: $6.95) </i>

The lush beauty of Hawaii provides a sharply contrasting backdrop to Susanna Moore’s cold, fragmented story of love and betrayal, as seen through a little girl’s eyes. Lily as a child and Lily as an adult speak in alternating chapters, trying to decipher the mysterious sorrow that leads to the suicide of her fragile, neurotic mother and the disappearance of her taciturn father. By learning to accept the past, she strives to prevent the sins of the previous generation from being visited upon the next.