Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s impossible to read this book without seeing Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly–and so I didn’t bother to try. The book is not a romance about a kept man and the crazy party girl who falls for him, however.

In the book, it’s somewhat clear that the narrator is gay (though he doesn’t state it directly that I noticed) and that Holly Golightly is a woman that draws people in. She’s NYC’s “It” girl. She parties with wealthy men, “dates” a wealthy heir to a fortune (who probably prefers men, maybe even infantilism, and uses her as his beard), runs errands for mobsters, and generally seems to be having a pretty exciting life.

But she’s broken, of course. And her broken-ness is what makes her so haunting. She charges through life, both a victor and a victim, and finds a way to pick herself up, dust herself off, and keep running. She’s her own worst enemy and her own savior. And I think you can’t help but wish you were a little like her (though not too much) and wish that she’d been your neighbor, if even for a summer, so you’d have some stories about her to tell.

It’s really no wonder she’s an iconic character. She felt very real despite being a figment.

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I just finished reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

The real triumph of this book, for me, was the structure. We are introduced to the victims and their killers. And then the murders are glazed over in order to delve into the backgrounds of the murderers, to provide glimpses into the effect the murders have on the community and detectives pursuing the case. And then, after humanizing the criminals as well as the detectives and victims, the crimes come to life in vivid and sad detail. Then we follow the murderers all the way to the end of the line–through the trial and beyond.

There’s a very good reason this book is the archetype for true crime. It’s brilliantly put together, with moments of real grief and horror interspersed with a journalistic accounting of the events.

I’m really looking forward to picking up Breakfast at Tiffany’s.