Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7939 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Synopsis
With her blond hair, upturned nose and black dresses, Holly Golightly is a sensation wherever she goes. Her apartment vibrates with parties as she plays hostess to millionaires and gangsters alike. Yet she never loses sight of her goal - to find a place like Tiffany's that makes her feel at home.

Customer Reviews

Of a cat and a girl
The story of this novel is in fact an instant one day remembered by Holly Golightly's neighbor (the narrator), when passing by the apartment he first rented at the beginning of his career, in New York as a writer.
Paradoxically, is with sadness and joy that he remembers Holly and the most relevant episodes of her life while living next door to her; a life lived everyday over the top as a party girl and semi-celebrity, with some ups and downs in between; as a person, being always unconventional and independent and as a friend, loyal, funny and a constant mystery.
Miss Golightly's hopes and dreams were big, usually involving celebrities, luxury and diamonds but by other hand, many times she revealed to be a very simple if not, quite a naïve soul holding a sad and dark past that she tries to forget by constantly covering it through a new and glittering Hollywood style persona that she create for herself.

The subtle irony of her portrait, rather than be critical or bitter, like maybe O.Wilde will certainly do, is here by Capote, a more insightful and deep appreciation in a way to understand the true nature of this fascinating character. A certain melancholy and a genuine compassion, better describes his feelings about Holly; a miserable child that grown up a dazzling but inconstant woman with dreams bigger than life but still a girl trying to find herself and her place in a world that probably she will never understand.

A captivating character study with prose like champagne
Breakfast at Tiffany's takes its cue from Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Both are short, beautifully written New York novels in which semi-invisible narrators wrestle with more self-indulgent characters, who take centre stage - and with whom the narrators enjoy ambiguous, shifting relationships.

In fact, the narrator in Breakfast at Tiffany's is so invisible he doesn't even have a name - apart from those the central character, Holly Golightly, gives him. The novel is a hymn to Holly - the narrator desperately wants to understand her, just as Nick Carraway struggles to understand Gatsby. Ultimately, though, hero and narrator are too different, with the heroes in both novels behaving exactly as heroes do: bolder, more inventive and almost certainly less stable than their narrators. Also like Gatsby, Holly Golightly has a hell of a backstory, slowly revealed.

Capote's prose is not dissimilar to Scott Fitzgerald's: poetic, but perhaps a little simpler and with a lighter touch, including some wry humour. Attractively written, it's difficult not to be as spellbound as the narrator is by Holly - however maddening she is. A captivating character study with prose like champagne - classy, and with fizz.

Gorgeous light read
Despite being a long time Truman Capote fan, Breakfast at Tiffany's was one of those books that I just never got around to reading. I've never seen the film either, although I cannot think of Audrey Hepburn without seeing her in my mind's eye as the fabulously glamorous Holly Golightly. When a character from a book becomes 'known' to you in this way, I think it's fair to describe that character - and indeed the book - as iconic.

Perhaps, in some small way, I did not want to read the book for fear of spoiling the illusion. I needn't have worried. Breakfast at Tiffany's is a gorgeous light read (I was going to say frivolous, but I don't think there is really anything frivolous about this book).

Holly Golightly, a young woman drifting through life as if it was one long holiday, is feisty and determined, if a little naive. Alone in New York City she blazes her way through the social scene, living it up in bars and holding parties in her east side apartment. But she unwittingly gets caught up in a Mafia plot and before you can say 'boo' she's in trouble with the law.

On the face of it, Breakfast at Tiffany's could be described as a fairly straightforward story about one girl's adventure in the big city. But I think that's too simplistic.

Written in 1958, it portrays a world in which women were invariably best seen and not heard, and totally reliant on men for money and worldly comforts. And yet Capote has created a female character that is largely independent and emotionally strong, although she's vulnerable too (loneliness, depression and desperation are hinted at). While she might be having a lot of fun, she's also on the run from a past that is forever trying to catch up with her as she tries to find a place that makes her feel as happy as Tiffany's does.

All in all, this short novella is a joy to read. Capote's writing is typically rich and lyrical. He describes this woman in such a way that you get the sense he has moulded her on someone that intrigued him, that held some allure or had an aura of mysticism that left a deep impression.

My edition also contained three equally crafted, highly entertaining and unforgettable short stories - House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar and the supremely moving and heart-felt A Christmas Memory - which demonstrate that Capote is not just a master of the novel.