Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.
In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he'd worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable: nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons...words.
***
FOR THE FIRST time in his life, the words refused to come.- ONE, 1974 (THEME)
***
(@penguinrandom, 9 August 2018, audiobook, 17 hours 51 minutes, bought from @audibleuk, narrated by Debora Weston)
***
***
I loved this book. I've read In Cold Blood but not his other work and had no knowledge of the events fictionalised in this book. I was fascinated by the way the book depicts Truman's life and his circle of Swans and how he infiltrates high society. Truman comes across as quite a pathetic person in the book, a little boy desperate to be loved and I felt pushed to feel sympathy for him. I didn't. I felt he was a horrible person, using people to get fodder for his next great book. I felt zero sympathy. I also struggled to feel sympathy for the people who shared their deepest, darkest secrets and were horrified when he sold them to the highest bidder. They should have known better. This is a compelling, riveting book.
