Name: Answered Prayers
ISBN: 9780345803047

Truman Capote

Although Truman Capote’s last, unfinished novel offers a devastating group portrait of the high and low society of his time. Tracing the career of a writer of uncertain parentage and omnivorous erotic tastes, Answered Prayers careens from a louche bar in Tangiers to a banquette at La Côte Basque, from literary salons to high-priced whorehouses. It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently finny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.

Answered Prayers

Laura

Answered Prayers is one of the few works of Capote's I haven't read, this and Music for Chameleons, which is still on my list. If you have never read anything by Capote or have only read In Cold Blood, I'd advise you to steer clear of this one. Start with one of his short stories (may I suggest Children on Their Birthdays? Miriam is also good, very Southern Gothic, as is A Christmas Memory- that one made me ugly cry) or perhaps Breakfast at Tiffany's or Other Voices Other Rooms. This work is only really for the already established Capote fans, those who wouldn't mind much the unfinished nature of the work. And I admit, it's not his best. It's obvious the book was written by Capote at the end, something that made this a little hard to read at some places. Hate to say it, but Capote is the warning story to all young hopeful authors, one of the brightest stars in the literary world at one time, until the publication of his magnum opus In Cold Blood and then his subsequent downfall into self-destructive alcoholism. Nowadays, few know him as anything other than the In Cold Blood guy, with Breakfast at Tiffany's sustaining itself in popular conscious only due to Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly- how many know it even was a novella in the first place? But enough about the tragedy of Capote. What of the work here? Answered Prayers started out strong, very strong. I was invested in the character of PB Jones, a character who is causally unlikable and a bit deluded and just self-aware enough to understand that he is both deluded and unlikable. There was some very darkly humorous passages that got me laughing and the descriptions and Capote's way of setting up scenes were so vivid I could perfectly picture everything going on as if it was playing on a movie reel in my head (for some reason, I pictured it in Wes Anderson's film style, don't really know why). So if it had just been Unspoiled Monsters, this would be an easy 5 star book. Unfortunately, the book declined as it went on. The second chapter, whose name I'm blanking on for some reason, wasn't my favorite, as I wasn't too invested in the relationship between PB Jones and Kate McCloud. However, in that chapter's favor, it at least followed Unspoiled Monsters nicely. The last chapter, the infamous Cote Basque, was the weakest in my opinion. I wasn't that invested in what was going on and I wished it had more of a connection to the first two chapters. Alas, if only this book was completed. As it stands, Answered Prayers is interesting only to those who are familiar with him and his works, since, like most books by famous authors, it is heavily autobiographical (PB Jones is a fairly obvious author surrogate, and interestingly enough, one that says that Capote was at least a little self-aware by the writing of Answered Prayers and wasn't entirely a victim of his own narcissism). Answered Prayers is a shadow of what it could have been.

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Answered Prayers

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