Alison's review

Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International)
by Truman Capote

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2287.Other_Voices_Other_Rooms?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1160807630m/2287.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2287.Other_Voices_Other_Rooms?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Other Voices, Other Rooms</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/431149.Truman_Capote">Truman Capote</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8340733?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars "The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes, lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory."
 
 I didn't expect to love this book. I guess going into it, I thought it would be a funny, quirky look at growing up in the South in the 1930's...with little family-friendly stories reminiscent of "A Christmas Memory." On the contrary, this bleak story is compiled of eccentric characters (nice word for looney), dark situations, sadness, morbidity, desperation, and hopelessness...and beautifully so.
 
 For it's time, this story is shocking and unsentimental. The language is beautiful and sadly poetic. The narrator is just a child when his mother dies and he is sent from his foster home in New Orleans to live with his father, step-mother, and cousin in a dilapidated mansion in Skully's Landing. (Think: Mrs. Havisham down South).
 
 The nearest town, Noon City, provides more strange and morbid characters including a set of twins Idabel and Florabel, a hermit named Little Sunshine that provides the area voodoo, an elderly man named Jesus Fever, and his daugher Missouri (Zoo), and, later, a pretty little circus midget. If it sounds like a motley crew, it is. They, along with Mr. Capote's prose, make this tale the epitome of Southern Goth.
 
 This is not a true memoir, but Capote, who spent formative years of his childhood in rural Alabama as well, later came to admit that some parts are autobiographical. This was published when Capote was 23.
 
 
 
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/124482?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Alison's review
rating:

bookshelves: classics, fivestars, southernwriters
recommended for: everyone
status: Read in November, 2007

"The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes, lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory."

I didn't expect to love this book. I guess going into it, I thought it would be a funny, quirky look at growing up in the South in the 1930's...with little family-friendly stories reminiscent of "A Christmas Memory." On the contrary, this bleak story is compiled of eccentric characters (nice word for looney), dark situations, sadness, morbidity, desperation, and hopelessness...and beautifully so.

For it's time, this story is shocking and unsentimental. The language is beautiful and sadly poetic. The narrator is just a child when his mother dies and he is sent from his foster home in New Orleans to live with his father, step-mother, and cousin in a dilapidated mansion in...more

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 0-0 of 0)

newest »

date

all Alison's books »