Truman Capote

Contains four of Capote's short fictional works, the first being about a well-liked but mysterious young woman named Holly Golightly who has many devoted friends but none that really know her.

Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories

Ashlyn Barrett

…a man's been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he's got his eye out for one person, and nobody's ever her, don't it stand to reason she's not there? I see pieces of her all the time. 

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

…crowd gathered there attracted there by a happy group of whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing Matilda." As they sang they took turns spin-dancing a girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, Miss Golightly, to be sure, floated round in their arms light as a scarf.

I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead.

Of course people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit.

She isn't a phony because she's a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes.

You've got to be sensitive to appreciate her: a streak of the poet.

I'm in New York cause I've never been to New York.

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.

The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody.

Matthew Soeder

“You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.”

“For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness, a rough pink darkening in the cheeks.”

Truman Capote is near-solely responsible for both the institutions of true crime and the manic pixie dream girl. 

Miles Silverstein

A Short Novel and Three Stories

Breakfast at Tiffany's

most certainly a book written by a man. while i've unfortunately learned to look past bland and predictable female characters as misogyny seems to be a given at times when reading classics, this book's main female character is boring and predictable in a way that makes her character shallow and offers no sort of insight or commentary into the kind of live she leads as an actress and the struggles she's had as a child and a young a woman. besides that, i did enjoy capote's writing style but it's nothing that hasn't been done before.

Nona Ana

I hope Holly has found a place where she belongs, too.

jack

Annika Arguemore

Most of the time, I didn't even understand what was going on due to all the idioms and expressions I didn't know the meaning of. I guess I could have just googled the meaning of said idioms and expressions, but they were too many.

In the eyes of a man, sure, Holly Golightly would be sexy, quirky, etc. but to me, the only thing that made Holly sexy was the fact that Audrey Hepburn starred as her.

I didn't get this book at all. Color me an uncultured heathen and whatnot, but it wouldn't change the fact that I honestly didn't get it at all.

Laura Mauler

Key to liking Breakfast at Tiffany's (the book): don't think of the movie.

Honestly didn’t think I’d enjoy this, but I did. 

Plot points jumped about quite a bit, it was nothing to expect from a 100 pager. 

However the Doc and Lulumae storyline felt randomly placed but as it gave some context to how and why Holly is Holly, it was reasonable. It just probably could have been slightly more expanded upon.

Sad near the end with the whole cat stuff. I liked that cat lol.

Didn’t read the extra three stories because I just didn’t feel like it. Might do at a later date

Libertad Aguilar

I used to like the movie. In fact I loved the movie for the fashion and of course Audrey Hepburn. But after reading the book, I don’t feel that Capote’s ordinary life sting was caught on screen. This chick is really messed up. Like messed up. Not because of her lifestyle, to each its own but just emotionally unstable. Real life is like that I feel and Capote got it. No need for happy endings. It just is

'What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. 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 . . . ' Meet Holly Golightly - a free spirited, lop-sided romantic girl about town. With her tousled blond hair and upturned nose, dark glasses and chic black dresses, Holly is a style sensation wherever she goes. Her apartment rocks to Martini-soaked parties and she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet Holly never loses sight of her ultimate dream - to find a real life place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home. Full of sharp wit and exuberant, larger-than-life characters which vividly capture the restless, madcap era of 1940s New York, Breakfast at Tiffany's will make you fall in love, perhaps for the first time, with a book. 'A master writer . . . makes the heart sing and the narrative fly' The New York Times

Beatriz Aguiar

Breakfast at Tiffany's
5 starts
yes. a showstopper for sure. it's a classic for a reason. Holly was flighty and hypocritical and so wrong sometimes but u can't help but kinda be mesmorised by it
i also loved the narrator.
was surprised at the abrupt ending but i guess that's capote's style 
i want more tho <3

House of Flowers
2 stars
my least favourite of the bunch, I guess it didn't appeal to me as much but I get what he was going for 

A Diamond Guitar
4 stars
every one of these stories is wholesome in its own way. just tugs at your heartstrings - the old man with no friends. 

A Christmas Memory 
4 stars
so wholesome and quirky and weird but so emotional somehow? very short but still well realised. tbh these are just short stories to make u weep like a child

Maria Elkoro-Iribe

lo he odiado he sido hate crimeada por lo menos una vez por página

Herinneringen van een jonge schrijver aan een naïeve en tegelijkertijd geraffineerde jonge vrouw, wier levensloop hij geleidelijk aan leert kennen.

Desayuno en Tiffany's

me pareció muy bueno el primer cuento, aunque termina un poco raro y de manera abrupta. No sabía que eran tres cuentos cuando lo empecé –asumí que eran tres capítulos–, por lo que fue un poco decepcionante arrancar a leer el segundo y ver que no continuaba la primera historia.

benja

Dana Paduraru

Simplified Chinese edition of Breakfast at Tiffany, the Truman Capote classic. In Simplified Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

andrea

everyone seems to love this, i didn't expect for my opinion to be this unpopular.
i didn't connect with the story (because there was no plot) nor the character of holly golightly. i don't know what i expected from this but darling this wasn't it. it was boring. some racism that i did not enjoy here and there. at least it's short and i liked some quotes.
i haven't seen the film so i don't know if it's better than the book but at least if i saw the film i would be looking at audrey hepburn and not at this boring writing. 
unremarkable classic, i could have gone on my whole life without reading this.

Jude Moon

i did not think that i would love this story as much as i did, but then i found myself crying at the end.

olivia musick

3.5 / 5 - enjoyed breakfast at tiffany’s but wasn’t crazy about the other three short stories

Celeste Richardson

I’ve always adored the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s one of my go—to films on cold winter’s nights, when I’m home alone and feeling sick or maudlin or both. This was my first time reading Capote’s short story that spawned the classic movie. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t usurp the film’s place in my heart.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Holly Golightly is one of the most selfish, unhappy, pitiable women I have ever read about. She's not likable. She's callous and rude unless she wants something from you, even though I do think that she means well somewhere (very) deep down. And still, she grew on me, and I felt true sympathy for her the further into the story I read. Being a wild thing is wonderful in the animal kingdom. Being a wild thing as a self-aware human being would be terrible. And that’s what Holly was: a miserable wild thing, so fearful of being caged that she would never let herself settle and be happy. 

I think that the most important line of the story is this: “Holly said she couldn’t bear to see anything in a cage.” And she couldn’t. Even if the cage was plush, or in the caged being’s best interest, nothing bothered Holly more than seeing something caged, because it was her biggest fear for herself. Yet, I think that Holly had caged herself with her lifestyle, and with her inability to call a place or a person home. And when she did try, she latched on for the wrong reasons, and her past blew up in her face, taking her future with it. 

Another line that I think was central to the story was spoken by Holly about Doc Golightly. She said “it’s better to look at the sky that live there.” In other words, it’s better to be the one left behind to mourn the wild thing than to be the wild thing that can’t be tamed, that can never find contentment no matter how lovely the cage. But, as our narrator hoped at the end of the story, so I hope that Holly found a home and a name like her nameless cat. I hope that she finally found contentment.

Aylén Abril Costantini 

Es una bella novela. El personaje de Holly es hermoso e interesante, te enamora. Pero la novela es lenta para mi gusto, no pasa mucho ...

Trever

Holly Golightly is an intriguing character, but really I liked this mostly for the mood. I don't know, it had a feeling of reminiscence and distance from the past, combined with Capote's first-person prose. It just felt right, even at the end. But the story itself is hardly even there. It's kind of just a character study. So it's really 3.5 stars rounded up.

Fraser Simons

Better than the movie; still a product of its time in the flaws department, though. Little bit racist, sexist sometimes. I loved the writing style and prose; lent the book a different quality and experience than the movie.

Vanessa Egger

Die Geschichte der neunzehnjährigen Holly Golightly wird aus der Sicht eines jungen namenlosen Schriftstellers, der ihr Nachbar ist, erzählt. 

Holly treibt in New York so vor sich hin, lebt in den Tag hinein und kennt keine Konsequenzen. Nur manchmal überfällt sie das „rote Elend“ und dann hilft nichts mehr außer einem Besuch bei Tiffany. 

Sie selbst gibt so gut wie nichts über ihre Vergangenheit preis. Alles was man über Holly im laufe der Geschichte erfährt, erzählt jemand aus ihrer näheren Umgebung. 

Natürlich ein muss für alle Capote Fans und meiner Meinung nach ein Buch das in keiner Privatbibliothek fehlen darf.

Helen Borham

I went into this book completely so didn’t know what to expect and never realised this was a book of short stories, the main event telling the story of Holly Golightly. Despite this tale totalling less than 100 pages I found it took a while to get to the point but I liked the characters

This is not a book I will rave about but I am happy to have ticked another classic off my list

Rose Stanley

Reminded me of Hemingway. You can tell Capote had Marilyn Monroe rather than Audrey Hepburn in mind. Thought the ending was more realistic than the film ending, but less satisfying : P

Summer Stanley

Not at all what I expected. Having previously watched the movie and strongly disliking it, I was pleasantly surprised. Truman Capote is rightfully revered.