"They are all shuttered, closed in on themselves," says Moore of her characters. That includes Arthur's long-lost love, Charlene, a single mother systematically destroying herself with alcohol and pills, and her son, Kel, a 17-year-old baseball prodigy who is just as alienated because he has to be her caretaker.
It's hard to reconcile the self-hating Arthur and his compadres with their accomplished creator, a slim, poised 28-year-old woman who seems very comfortable in her skin.
Unlike the phlegmatic Arthur, Moore is all action.
Born to an academic family in Framingham, Mass. - dad, Stephen Moore, is a Harvard University physicist who specializes in nuclear medicine; mom, Christine Parkhurst, teaches English at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences - Moore wrote her first book, The Words of Every Song: A Novel, while an undergrad at Barnard College in New York.
"I took a lot of creative writing courses," Moore says during an afternoon chat in her South Philly living room.
"And I was able to write a lot of the stories as my classwork."
Moore didn't waste her free time: A guitar player and singer, she played gigs throughout college, releasing her first album, Backyards, shortly after graduating in 2005.
"It's acoustic, singer-songwriter [music]," Moore says when asked about the album.
"I guess it's a little folk."
While not exactly a roman à clef, The Words of Every Song draws heavily on Moore's personal experience.
Set in New York's music scene, each of its 14 linked stories focuses on a different character, including a would-be rock star, a has-been megastar, and a cynical record executive.
"I was really immersed in New York's music scene," says Moore. "I used to work at this well-known guitar store in the Village called Matt Umanov Guitars, and I met a ton of characters there and while I was out playing shows. . . . It seemed easy, in a way, to write about them."
