Book Review: OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS, by Truman Capote

OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS is Capote's first novel. He wrote it when he was something like 21, which is very impressive. Set in spooky rural Kansas (right?), the novel follows Joel Knox as he sets off, after the death of his mother, to live with the father he's never met. Full of ominous, inconclusive scenes and characters that made me vaguely uneasy OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS is told in the gorgeous sort of prose that is meant to be read aloud.

I think I ultimately prefer both Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood to Capote's first work, but OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS is not a bit disappointing.

RATING: 4

Book Review: IN COLD BLOOD, by Truman Capote

When no fewer than three people stop you in the bookstore to point out what a great book it is you're considering, one can't help but have certain high (very high) expectations of said book. Two of the people who stopped me were employees; the third was a stranger with a pronounced German accent. I took them at their word, and bought IN COLD BLOOD.

I was not disappointed. I was not in the neighborhood of disappointment, nor perhaps, in the same town as disappointment. I'll say it, too: IN COLD BLOOD is a great book.

Published in 1965, IN COLD BLOOD reconstructs the brutal murder of four members of a prominent ranching family in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, and follows the investigation of the near-perfect crime to its resolution. Capote's sense of timing and the pacing of the story are flawless: he depicts an entire community as it suffers the fall-out of this vicious crime, and as its citizens begin, for the first time, to distrust one another; he portrays the killers and their victims with a skillful empathy that displays the subjects' many facets in a curiously objective light.

IN COLD BLOOD is a fascinating study of violence that is at times disturbing, at times uncomfortable, but always unflinchingly honest. Several times, Capote gave me chills--his mastery of language is incredible, so that he could set up an entire scene in a subdued, unthreatening tone, but then knock my socks off with a single image: a lawyer, touching the back of his neck in a courtroom; the lazy circling of a housefly. Of all the varied scenes and circumstances of the book, those deceptively insignificant images were the ones that stuck with me.

To sum up, Capote can use phrases like, "in a pool of his own blood" and make them scary rather than cliche--probably because he said it first, though I couldn't back that up. But I bet he did say it first.

RATING: 5

Book Review: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, by Truman Capote

Two things I've been half-heartedly meaning to do for a long time:
1) watch Breakfast at Tiffany's, and
2) read something by Truman Capote.

Funny coincidence that Capote wrote the book, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S? Who knew TIFFANY'S was even a book in the first place? Okay, well, I didn't.

At any rate, I came across TIFFANY'S in a used bookshop and found that once I started thumbing through it, I couldn't stop--I ended up twenty pages into it, wholly engrossed in Miss Holly Golightly, Traveling, before I managed to tear myself away to purchase the book.

Capote's writing is every bit like writing should be: crisp, concise, never laden down by excessive description, but certainly not leaving anything out. His descriptions are well-chosen, his sentences expertly designed--so well put-together that they feel accidental, as though they fell out of his pen, just like that.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is actually a long short story, so at the end of the book, three other short stories are included. All three of them are wonderful as well.

In fact, the only thing I could find to complain about was the fact that I had that damn "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song (who sings that anyway?) stuck in my head nearly the entire time I read the book. Bah. It's such a whiny song, too.

RATING: 4