From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

Truman Capote

Start date: February 15, 2017

Finish date: March 15, 2017

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What Members Thought

Nov 27, 2009 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, contemporary-fiction, novellas, book-and-movie, read-2009, audio-books

Truman Capote's abridged novel about a young New York writer and captivating 1940s girl-about-town Holly Golightly

Now I must read In Cold Blood. ...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Meika rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 11, 2020 Douglas Beagley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Breakfast at Tiffany's is literature: its plot is not the point; the precision and calculation of each word and sentence surpass what I'm capable of; and most people won't get anything out of it, but you'd be surprising how many will if they give it a shot. The book is a short, colorful, ramble, depicting real qualities of people in ways that are surreal and unlikely.

While reading, I think I'm sliding down a light, laughing, somber romp--yet behind all the dancing, the book portrays a kind of c Breakfast at Tiffany's is literature: its plot is not the point; the precision and calculation of each word and sentence surpass what I'm capable of; and most people won't get anything out of it, but you'd be surprising how many will if they give it a shot. The book is a short, colorful, ramble, depicting real qualities of people in ways that are surreal and unlikely.

While reading, I think I'm sliding down a light, laughing, somber romp--yet behind all the dancing, the book portrays a kind of casual racism, sexism, classicism, hidden depression, and homophobia that were particular to a time and place. These are all presented in ways that might be mistaken for frankness and progressive acceptance. Or perhaps not. (I can't separate out what opinions are the author's and which are the narrator's.) Was this book scandalous in its time? I don't want to know. Brave, perhaps? There's a lot in here: stereotypes made, broken, and remade; bisexuality prodded and questioned; outright pedophilia hidden behind curtains; wildly, it even includes a minuscule brush with explaining dominance and submission in a relationship--just a tiny dusting on these topics, as if we can think about these things only in passing, because it's time for lunch. And a martini.

The most magnetic (in that it pulls on you but is all-but invisible) aspect of Breakfast at Tiffany's is the portraiture of the relationship between the narrator and the main character, Holly Golightly--this relationship is painted in strokes around itself, mostly, crafted with negative space. I am very glad that the author never really jammed it home. There are other parts of the book that might distill to treacle--like the frame narrative, the neatly matching edges of the paper coming together just so--but sentimentalism is not a bad thing in small doses.

Literature sometimes destroys itself by trying to be deep. "Oh, one of those books where the author tries to be deep." That's avoided successfully, I think. This is a perfect little lozenge of a book. It dissolves on your tongue, has unknown and perhaps suspect medicinal qualities, but it makes one feel pulled forward into something brighter, fizzier, truer, or at least sweeter, even as you know the feeling is illusory.

Recommended. ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Amanda rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, 4-stars

Spring 2019 - audiobook;

I picked this one up on one of the many sales I picked up classic books from on Audible, and it's sat around a while waiting for me to push up the numbers into it. I have to admit I think I saw the movie for this book years and years and years ago, so long all I had going in was a sense of Hepburn like someone I passed on the street so long ago everything was foggy around the crisp vision of her beauty and more the taste of the soul of story than the remembrance of any s ...more

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Mar 09, 2008 Becca rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

From what I remember of the movie, it only stops like, halfway through this book. Capote does an amazing job of creating such a loveable, entrancing unreliable character!

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