It’s the first BotW that I read in 2024 and it’s one of my Christmas gifts. And it’s non fiction, so here we are ticking off some goals for the year – more non fiction and reducing the pile!
Capote’s Women is Laurence Leamer’s look at Truman Capote and the women who he surrounded himself with – right up until the point where he published thinly disguised versions of them in his famous – or notorious – extract from his unfinished novel in Esquire magazine. This functions as a bit of a group biography – looking at each woman’s life and how it fitted in with Truman’s.
I’ve read – and written – about this little coterie before and this is a pretty good overview of the women and their involvement with Capote. I think I was expecting more about the fall out from his article – but I think I might have drawn that conclusion from the fact that the book is the basis for the next series of Feud because looking back at the blurb for this, it doesn’t really imply that. Several of the women are interesting enough that you want to read more about them – some of them I already have, others I’ll keep an eye out for. There are a couple of Swans not covered – including Ann Woodward, which is a fairly big omission, but you wouldn’t know there was any one missing if you didn’t know about the group already if that makes sense! You do sometimes lose a little track of where in time you are as it goes through the women, but I think trying to go with everything chronologically would have been even worse and very, very confusing.
Anyway, this was an interesting read that fitted right into my areas of interest that I was delighted to get for Christmas. I look forward to seeing what the TV series does with it! it’s out in hardback now but you can also get it in Kindle and Kobo – and as a bonus the price on the e-edition has come down to £4.99 (from £9.99) over the last day or two.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 