Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Dec 24, 2019 Maggie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, guardian-1000, boxall-1001, fiction, romance, short-stories, classics

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. More than half of this book is the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the rest is filled by three other shorter stories. Though all four stories are about different types of love (playful/seductive, heterosexual romantic, homosexual romantic, familial/friendship), they differ in style, tone, setting and subject matter, and display the range of Capote's writing abilities.

Breakfast at Tiffany's
"'Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging More than half of this book is the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the rest is filled by three other shorter stories. Though all four stories are about different types of love (playful/seductive, heterosexual romantic, homosexual romantic, familial/friendship), they differ in style, tone, setting and subject matter, and display the range of Capote's writing abilities.

Breakfast at Tiffany's
"'Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.'"

Holly Golightly is the sort of person I would detest in real life. A twenty-year-old socialite who winds men around her little finger, she frequently has men who are total strangers with each other in her apartment trying to win her attention, sleeps with men as and when she pleases, and makes a living from accompanying them and getting "powder room" tip money. Vain and promiscuous, she is easily hated by other women, and she doesn't care. The narrator himself is nameless except for the name she frivolously gives him, Fred, after her brother, and when the real Fred dies, the narrator is known only as "darling" or "dear".

Yet behind this facade lies a complex and layered character. Snippets show Holly to be a country music and horse-loving rural girl who became a child bride at the age of fourteen. Her past has shaped her into a "wild thing", unbound by societal constraints and its values of chastity and orthodox decency. Like Capote, who was a homosexual in a society that did not accept homosexuality, Holly struggles to fit into the world. She creates a fashionable persona who is wild and rebellious and heedless of others' opinions, yet ironically the creation of this persona is reactionary to her deep desire to fit in and be loved and admired.

Behind her devil-may-care appearance, she has a compassionate and generous heart. Even as she breaks her husband Doc Golightly's heart, she does it gently and kindly. She recognises that the narrator is a person on the outside looking in, and instead of ostracising him, she treats him with kindness and respect. When her brother Fred, the one person she deeply loves, dies, she sinks into despair. And when she is arrested for unknowingly aiding a drug ring leader, Sally Tomato, she flees the country, risking her own life, so that she will not have to testify against someone who showed her kindness. She is a wild, broken bird, who has walked along crooked paths to find her own way in life, but innately has a good and kind heart.

There is a scene near the end where Holly abandons her cat, then desperately tries to search for it again, realising that, contrary to her own beliefs, she is tied to something in the world. It gives hope that the future Holly finds belonging and lives a more settled life.

House of Flowers
Set in Haiti, this story features a rural girl who runs away from her friends in a fancy brothel to marry a rural boy whom she has just met, and the problems she encounters in her relationships with his grandmother, then with him. The story has a mythological quality, not only in its use of spells and magic, but also in the way things happen with little regard for realistic consequences and implications, and in its dreamlike, fantastical tone.

A Diamond Guitar
House of Flowers ends with a girl tied to a tree, which leads nicely to A Diamond Guitar, set in a prison. A long-time, respected, prisoner, Mr Schaefer, begins a relationship with a new teenage inmate, Tico Feo. The homosexual relationship in an era where homosexuality was not accepted creates a sexual tension throughout that can never surface fully. Ultimately Tico manipulates Mr Schaefer, leaving Mr Schaefer in a wistful, lonesome solitude, even though he still retains his respected place in the prison.

A Christmas Memory
This is a delightful story of two best friends, a young boy and his elderly, childlike cousin, who save pennies and dimes throughout the year so they can bake fruitcakes at Christmas to give away. Underlying the joy and sweet friendship that the two share, there is bittersweetness, for though the seven-year-old narrator thinks that the two of them are poor and that the rest of the household looks down on him and his cousin, we know that it is really only his cousin who is so. Thus the way she teaches the boy to enjoy the simple things in life and to be rich in joy in the midst of poverty is especially poignant. Sure enough the narrator later grows up and is sent to school and away from his cousin, though he never forgets her friendship even as she grows senile. The story seems to sweet to be true, and I was touched on discovering that this is an autobiographical story of Truman Capote and his cousin Sook. ...more

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May 29, 2013 Nola Tillman rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction-drama, 1001-books-to-read, classics

Enjoyed the novel. The themes were pretty standard, nothing startling or that really stood out, but the writing was good. The tone was breezy, much like the infamous Holly Golightly herself.

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