A very quick but highly enjoyable read. I love how Capote writes and his descriptions are just fantastic. Holly Golightly is such an iconic fictional figure so I figured it was about time to read the novella. I loved the three other stories as well, I’m a big fan of short stories, they were quite touching. Great stuff!

my impression of breakfast at tiffany’s is this: truman capote is not a great author. he was simply around great people with great stories, and thought enough to commit them. im not saying hes a bad author, just not the immortalized icon that he has become.

however, then i read the short stories. ive always had an affinity for short stories, and i absolutely loved all three of these. terse and clever and descriptive but not too wordy, these are great reads.

and after i finished with the short stories, it became evident to me the nature of the narrator in breakfast at tiffany’s. in the book, he is a struggling author, vain with a temper. this personality is reflected in the writing style, because the other stories are not written in the same style. so..maybe capote is as great an author as he’s supposed to be. i’ll read a couple more to find out at least.

It is worthwhile if you are only familiar with Holly Golightly from the Audrey Hepburn movie to read the original novella that introduced this famous character. Holly is a creature that never quite fits into her world, all at once naive and worldly, self-involved and compassionate, emotionless and passionate. Her paradoxes are what make her fascinating, both to us and to the men who come in contact with her. Holly’s fate in the novella is not a happy one as in the movie, but is rather much more nebulous—it is left to the reader to judge, and that is somehow more satisfying. This volume also contains three of Capote’s most famous short stories, including “A Christmas Memory,” which seems a lot sadder to me now than when I first read it in high school.