Because sometimes truth is stranger than fiction – I review Swan Song a reimagining of Truman Capote’s life and downfall.
Swan Song – the blurb
They told him everything.
He told everyone else.
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.
Read a page, google a person
I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s not so long ago and enjoyed it yet Swan Song, about the latter years of Capote’s life, completely passed me by at the time of its release. For me the book wasn’t so much about the quality of the writing (excellent) nor the plot (more character lead than racing page turner) but about the fascinating true life of Truman Streckfus Persons Capote. I had no idea! I went in quite blind but as I got to grips with it (it does skip about a bit) and realised what I was reading I was hooked. The revelations kept on coming as did the celebrities. Did you know he was childhood friends with Harper Lee and ‘Dill’ is loosely based on him? They didn’t teach me that when I studied it at school! I loved how the title worked on so many levels with the theme often being referred to in the book. To be honest there wasn’t much I didn’t love about it.
It includes everyone who was anyone back in the golden era of Hollywood. The glitz and the glamour, the fashion, the food and of course the alcohol. Greenberg-Jephcott made it all so effortlessly evocative (from a debut!) I’m not sure what I ended up feeling about Truman, but of his circle of swans I’m a little star struck. Superb. And I of course now have to read Answered Prayers
