The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 January 2000
by Truman Capote
Holly Golightly has entered the pantheon of American archetypes. Truman Capote's wonderful short novel depicts Holly in her free-spirited world of parties and glamorous affairs with highly-placed men. She is hard-headed and smart-mouthed, but at heart she is a romantic, looking for that little slice of perfection typified by the calm majesty at Tiffany & Co. Holly is an elusive spirit, a woman difficult to pin down, her emotions and past alternately worn on a sleeve and deeply hidden. She is beautiful and sad, adventurous and free. Capote captures Holly beautifully, along with the confusion and yearning of the people around her. (The book differs on a few points from the excellent 1961 movie of the same name. Though, one cannot help, while reading, to imagine Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, and Buddy Ebsen in the story, the book is more racy and ends quite differently.)
This book includes three other, much shorter but equally excellent, stories: House of Flowers, about a woman taken from a rich life in a bordello to rule over a domestic nest; A Diamond Guitar, a gentle look at the inside of a prison camp; and A Christmas Memory, a well-known memoir of Capote's chaotic childhood holidays.
Also by Capote: [In Cold Blood]