Summer Crossing - Truman Capote

Apparently Capote was rather unhappy with this novel(la?) and that was one of the reasons why it wasn't published during his lifetime. Man, did he have high standards...

Summer Crossing is not exactly the best book of the 20th century, but that doesn't mean that one cannot spend a couple of enjoyable hours reading it. Again, this is a typical "New York book", inclusive of holidays in the Hamptons, inter-class romance, parties, garages etc.

It's not going to change your life, and it surely didn't change mine, but it can be good company on a lazy (early) summer afternoon.

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

I actually had to wait for my wife and baby daughter to be quite literally on the other side of the planet (Brazil) before I could muster the strength and courage to read this book. And to think that when I was young I thought that Capote had just written Breakfast at Tiffany’s and nothing else…

The opening chapter was, for me, by far the hardest to read – not so much because of the brutality of the scenes (I was already quite familiar with the story), but because I was almost physically sick by the point Nancy’s friend found the first body and couldn’t stop thinking of Bobby Rupp (Nancy’s boyfriend) and what he must have experienced.

The rest of the book didn’t have many surprises, but it did end with the added (and for me really unexpected) drama of the stories of Lowell Lee Andrews, George York and James Latham – and all the people they killed before joining Perry and Dick on the death row – and that so nearly tipped me over the edge.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

I have never been a big fan of Audrey Hepburn (Katherine, on the other hand, is one of the loves of my life) and I’m really glad I’ve read this great little novella before watching what is for me a vastly overrated and sappy movie.

In the book, Holly is undeniably a lot more interesting than in the movie – her joie de vivre is very much the same, but in the book she just seems, well, deeper than in the film, and her charm doesn’t owe solely to her unique approach to life but also to some more mysterious traits of her personality. Also, to me the novella is much more about Holly than the movie (where too much importance is, in my opinion, given to the one who at the end of the day is the unnamed narrator of the book).

And the fact that she doesn’t find Cat, the cat (sorry, I had to write it) and that the end of the book is not as cheesy as the movie’s final scene really made me happy…