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Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

Truman Capote

Start date: July 1, 2013

Finish date: July 31, 2013

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Dec 18, 2012 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, 1305

I am pretty sure that this was a re-read but one that I only have slight memory of. Most of my impression of Breakfast at Tiffany's came, like so many others, from the film. This Holly Golightly is not the same as the Audrey Hepburn version. She is more interesting, deeper and all around a better character. One cannot help but root for Miss Holiday Golightly.

"Never love a wild thing... you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough ...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Sheila rated it really liked it

Shelves: owned, favorites, boxalls-1001

Holiday Golightly, Traveling

Certainly, having that in a calling card attracts attention. But the lovable thing about Truman Capote's best creation is that Holly never consciously tries to get attention; she's a natural. A dreamer. A poet. The perfect cafe society girl.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a story about the 19-year-old Texan runaway and orphan, Holly Golightly, whom Capote clarified as an American geisha, not a prostitute. Her primary occupation is dating rich, older men, whom she al Holiday Golightly, Traveling

Certainly, having that in a calling card attracts attention. But the lovable thing about Truman Capote's best creation is that Holly never consciously tries to get attention; she's a natural. A dreamer. A poet. The perfect cafe society girl.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a story about the 19-year-old Texan runaway and orphan, Holly Golightly, whom Capote clarified as an American geisha, not a prostitute. Her primary occupation is dating rich, older men, whom she allows to take her home at night and even kiss her in the neck. In return for her companionship, they give her gifts of money or jewelry.

Her lifestyle is the first thing that her neighbors notice---going home past midnight, sometimes alone, sometimes with a man, ringing the bell to rouse her neighbor at any hour when she can't find her keys. Even when she doesn't introduce herself formally, Holly manages to involve her neighbors in her life just by being her annoying, but charming self. When she met the writer she calls Fred, she was in the middle of a situation with a man she invited to her apartment and whom she wanted to escape from at that particular moment.

In just 111 pages, Capote created a story about a girl who has a dream. Of love, of wealth, of being reunited with her brother somewhere in Mexico. As this is the first work of Capote that I've read, I'm not yet quite used to his writing style and language, but he gave Holly a magnetic personality which is primarily evident in her speech that is breezy but thoughtful and sometimes poetic.

My favorite part in the novella is not when she released her nameless cat in Spanish Harlem. It happened much earlier, when she was relating to Fred how she came to be the incarcerated Sally Tomato's niece, how it was romantic of Sally to remember her face even if they had not met and how the visitors of Sing Sing looked their best. Holly may be smoking cigarettes, drinking brandy, and losing sleep socializing with men like a real sophisticated lady, but she's still very much a girl who believes in romance and in the innocent side of things. It makes her naive and causes her trouble in the end, but still, it's what the writer and the bar owner and countless other men in the story love about her. That vulnerability she can't shake just yet.

I would read this again after a year or maybe I'll watch the movie so I can compare. ...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Renee rated it really liked it

I really liked this book. The Holly character was far more complex than the movie. Capote did a great job of using a narrater to tell Holly's story and impart a unique view of this character that brought in additional emotional insight. It was also just a super quick read. ...more

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