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.