TITLE: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
AUTHOR: Truman Capote
PAGE COUNT: 157 pages
PUBLISHER: Penguin Books UK
ORIGINAL PUBLICATION DATE: 12 October 1958
GENRE: Classics, Fiction & Short Stories
SYNOPSIS: It’s New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany’s. And nice girls don’t, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly ‘top banana in the shock department’, and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.
This edition also contains three stories: ‘House of Flowers’, ‘A Diamond Guitar’ and ‘A Christmas Memory’
I was so excited going into this book and I am really looking forward to watch the film as well, especially after I read this. It was a really short book, super easy to get through and it had my attention from the beginning to the end.
There is just something about Holly Golightly that fascinates you. She has this captivating air around her that attracts other characters and the reader. You cannot help but fall in love with her. I really enjoyed this book and pictured Audrey Hepburn the entire time as I read this, even though I have not watched the movie before.
With most classics, I find it really difficult to get into the story but this book was entirely different. Capote introduces and describes the characters so well that one cannot help but immediately fall into the story and feel part of it.
You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.”
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
I don’t want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.”
Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.”
It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.”
You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s a friend.”
Home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.”
She was still hugging the cat. “Poor slob,” she said, tickling his head, “poor slob without a name. It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him one: he’ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don’t belong to each other: he’s an independent, and so am I. I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like.” She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. “It’s like Tiffany’s,” she said.
[…]
It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”
Never love a wild thing…If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”
I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”
Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’d walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.”
You’re wonderful. Unique. I love you.”
I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.”
Love should be allowed. I’m all for it. Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea what it is.”
But it’s Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays.”
Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a “non-fiction novel.” At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.
He was born as Truman Streckfus Persons to a salesman Archulus Persons and young Lillie Mae. His parents divorced when he was four and he went to live with his mother’s relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. He was a lonely child who learned to read and write by himself before entering school. In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her new husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born businessman. Mr. Capote adopted Truman, legally changing his last name to Capote and enrolling him in private school. After graduating from high school in 1942, Truman Capote began his regular job as a copy boy at The New Yorker. During this time, he also began his career as a writer, publishing many short stories which introduced him into a circle of literary critics. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks and became controversial because of the photograph of Capote used to promote the novel, posing seductively and gazing into the camera.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Capote remained prolific producing both fiction and non-fiction. His masterpiece, In Cold Blood, a story about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, was published in 1966 in book form by Random House, became a worldwide success and brought Capote much praise from the literary community. After this success he published rarely and suffered from alcohol addiction. He died in 1984 at age 59.
Keep on reading and never stop telling stories.
White Rose Stories 
I’ve had an up and down relationship with Capote’s novels but I have this one on my shelves and hope I can read it soon.
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I have only read this novel of his, so I am interested to see what I’ll think of his other works. Hope you like this one!
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