“And I said what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s, she said I think I remember the film”
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – the blurb
It’s New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany’s. And nice girls don’t, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while – down. Pursued by to Salvatore ‘Sally’ Tomato, the Mafia sugar-daddy doing life in Sing Sing and ‘Rusty’ Trawler, the blue-chinned, cuff-shooting millionaire man about women about town, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly ‘top banana in the shock department’, and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.
Iconic Image
Who isn’t familiar with the iconic Holly Golightly? Or should I say the Audrey Hepburn image with the gloves and the cigarette? But who is actually familiar with the story? Not the one told in the 1961 film but the one told by Truman Capote which is actually quite a bit different? I wasn’t which is why, when stumbling across a second hand copy, I snatched it up and gave it a whirl.
A sprinkling of Hollywood
Having only previously read Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ I initially struggled to reconcile that writer with Hepburn’s guitar strumming Holly. Yet Capote’s version isn’t as sweet as perhaps the film version makes out. Holly, to put it bluntly, is a call girl. An expensive one as may be but none the less a prostitute who accompanies men into powder rooms for $50 a pop. The book doesn’t have a Hollywood style ending although the Gatsby-esque lifestyle of alcohol and parties is rife. There are surprises within the plot and Holly is clearly a girl for whom life hasn’t come easy. The scene where she first paints her face before reading some painful news was very revealing. Yet it all fits within a brief 100 or so pages. Result!
Four for the price of one
My copy of the book came with 3 additional short stories (including a Christmas one that was perfect for this time of year). My review nevertheless is reserved for Tiffany and Tiffany alone. It’s very simple to read, I’m sure I could re-read it and get more out of it still. But I’m taking what I got – champagne, a cat who hopefully found a good home and a man who will never quite recover from meeting the iconic Holly Golightly.
