Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories

truman capote

... Show More
The tale of a fun-loving, amoral playgirl in New York City is accompanied by House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory.

162 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28,1958
Places
new york city new york, upper east side new york city new york, manhattan new york city new york, 

This edition

Format
162 pages, Hardcover
Published
January 13, 1994 by Modern Library
ISBN
9780679600855
ASIN
067960085X
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Holly Golightly

    Holly Golightly

    The main character of the novella, Holly is a New York City café society girl who lives in the same brownstone apartment building as the narrator. Her income comes primarily in the form of cash gifts from the wealthy men she socializes with and sleeps wit...

  • Doc Golightly

    Doc Golightly

    A large-animal veterinarian from Texas who took in Holly and Fred when they were young. He is Hollys husband, having married her when she was fourteen....

  • Joe Bell

    Joe Bell

    ...

  • I.Y. Yunioshi

    I.y. Yunioshi

    ...

  • Mag Wildwood

    Mag Wildwood

    ...

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for truman capote

truman capote

... Show More
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Truman Capote was an American writer whose non-fiction, stories, novels and plays are recognised literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1965), which he labeled a "non-fiction novel." At least 20 films and TV dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories and screenplays.

He was born as Truman Streckfus Persons to a salesman Archulus Persons and young Lillie Mae. His parents divorced when he was four and he went to live with his mother's relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. He was a lonely child who learned to read and write by himself before entering school. In 1933, he moved to New York City to live with his mother and her new husband, Joseph Capote, a Cuban-born businessman. Mr. Capote adopted Truman, legally changing his last name to Capote and enrolling him in private school. After graduating from high school in 1942, Truman Capote began his regular job as a copy boy at The New Yorker. During this time, he also began his career as a writer, publishing many short stories which introduced him into a circle of literary critics. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, published in 1948, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks and became controversial because of the photograph of Capote used to promote the novel, posing seductively and gazing into the camera.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Capote remained prolific producing both fiction and non-fiction. His masterpiece, In Cold Blood, a story about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, was published in 1966 in book form by Random House, became a worldwide success and brought Capote much praise from the literary community. After this success he published rarely and suffered from alcohol addiction. He died in 1984 at age 59.

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
37(37%)
4 stars
33(33%)
3 stars
30(30%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Slemmen447
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Oh Holly, what do we do with you? This beautiful woman is engaging, capricious, untidy, and attractive – mysterious too. She is beautiful on the eye to be sure, instantly attractive; everything seems exciting about her. On open book.

Dangerous.

An impending disaster.

One really wouldn’t want to fall in love with her – easy to do admittedly. Holly would drive you up the wall. It’s not just her passing tastes, her capriciousness, and her naked honesty – it’s the excitement, the risk. I know that’s not for everyone, but for this old bloke, years gone by – I would have lapped her up.

Any dalliance with Holly would certainly end in tears – yours, not hers. The striking thing about Holly is her indifference. Not inflicted in any conscious way, I am sure she doesn’t mean it. You could say she’s careless with the hearts and feelings of others.

Importantly, she doesn’t give false promises.

Just because others fall for her charms, and they are substantial, does that mean she’s obliged to reciprocate their emotions towards her? I’m not so sure.

I love her free spirit.

Capote, and this is my second experience with his work, was a genius.

5 Stars
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
HaiseK
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Well, what can one say about Holly Golightly. She was beautiful, she was mean, she was independent, sometimes cruel, sometimes caring. Holly was as free as a bird, but shackled by her birth. She was temptress and torturer. She was glue and glamorous. Holly was light and darkness. She conquered and crashed. She loved and loathed.
Holly:"... good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not law-type honest -- I'd rob a grave, I'd steal two-bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to the day's enjoyment -- but unto-thyself-type honest. Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to. Oh, screw it, cookie -- hand me my guitar, and I'll sing you a fada in the most perfect Portuguese."
Her story is narrated by her upstairs neighbor, an aspiring writer, who befriended her, despite a downstairs neighbor, Madame Sapphia Spanella's outspoken wrath against Holly: "A crude exhibitionist, a time waster, an utter fake, somebody never to be spoken to again". But Holly was also 'pampered, calmly immaculate, as though she'd been attended by Cleopatra's maids'.

Nineteen year old Holly was from Tulip, Texas, before she landed up in New York. Since the age of fourteen she was on her own, taking care of her brother Fred, who was in the army. He loved peanut butter, which she bought for him anywhere she could find it during the war times.
n  "Fred's a soldier," said Holly. "But I doubt if he'll ever be a statue. Could be. They say the more stupid you are the braver. He's pretty stupid."

"Fred's that boy upstairs? I didn't realize he was a soldier. But he does look stupid."

"Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid. Anyhow, he's a different Fred. Fred's my brother."

"You call your own f-f-flesh and b-b-blood stupid?"

"If he is he is."n
This is a short novella, about a female character who deserved her place as one of the most outstanding literary characters of all times. What captured me the most is the way this young woman was presented to the world. Someone who could be loved; a young woman who could become a friend. She had heart and soul. She was warm and wonderful. But just as cold and calculating, since she did not quite trust the people's intentions towards her and therefore never really allowed herself to bond with anyone.
n  "I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they're all pant and puff."n
Her actions prevented people to come too near, even her friends stood aside. A tragic figure. A statistic for the cognoscenti, the people who despised the likes of her.

The film adaptation of this novella was very different from the book. I suspect nobody wanted to play the lead role of Holly, since it was unacceptable for their careers. And to get Audrey Hepburn to be the star, the script had to be changed considerably. The most important difference was to portray Holly as an innocent young woman who did not prostitute herself in the movie. The male lead, played by George Peppard, became a romantic character instead of the gay writer who became her friend in the book(he fell in love with his childhood postman). In the movie he also became a toy-boy himself to a wealthy women (not part of the book).

Although I enjoyed the movie, I loved the book much more.

Truman Capote created a complex character in his iconic writing style. Nobody can forget Holly Golightly. The social realism of the 1940s-New York embraced this girl next door, and made her something very different than the normal portrayal of these social climbers. She became a person with a heart and soul. Someone to empathize with.

A wonderful, soul-touching story. A classic must-read.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
BadSuns
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
I haven't seen the movie adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, so I had zero expectations going into the book. However I have always been intrigued by Audrey Hepburn's iconic Holiday Golightly and by Truman Capote in general, so I just had to read this.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is about our unnamed narrator's slightly tragic friend-zoned relationship with the vivacious starlet/playgirl Holly Golightly.

"I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together."

Holly is a fascinating character made of opposites. She's worldly and vulnerable, classy and crass, a girl obviously playing a vixen but is infinitely broken and oblivious to the things she really needs. Come to think of it Holly Golightly might very well be one of the prototypes of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Reading Breakfast at Tiffany's was like looking at a lit firecracker waiting to go boom, because at every turn of the novel and every decision that Holly made, felt like a step closer to ruin.Her characterization is the best part of the novel.

Given that this was published in 1958, I imagine the humor and the dialogue in his book were pretty much risqué at that the time. Truman Capote's writing was fantastic, but this was just 3.5 stars read for me. The boom I was expecting turned out to be nothing but a pop.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
modesto_medicino
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
A trillion billion times more profound & wonderful than movie, which is drivel, aside from featuring the ever luminous Audrey Hepburn. Sugh a great, great book!!!!
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
CountZeroOr
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
⭐⭐⭐⭐:) A minha opinião em https://youtu.be/tUsOA_iJqJM A primeira vez que li Truman Capote.
Neste livro temos a história de Holy uma mulher, deslumbrante, espirituosa, no entanto extremamente vulnerável e por isso esta história se torna um pouco triste.
Temos como narrador um escritor que conhece Holly de uma forma muito especial, nutre por ela um amor platónico não correspondido.
Gostei desta novela com comédia à mistura, no entanto não foi uma história suficiente para chegar às 5 estrelas.
O livro é pequeno daí não haver desculpas para não ser lido.
Boas leituras
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
soron
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell", Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky"

"Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc - it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
-Kazu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
It’s a brilliant character sketch, 150 pages you can polish off in a day. The story of a fascinating, seriously flawed young woman who moves to New York in the 40’s leaving Hicksville  along with her husband & his children behind and reinvents herself as Holly Golightly, in the process losing all sense of who she is. A complex character, shifting between generosity and self-absorption, kindness & cruelty. Capote can write… you almost hear the clicking of martini glasses and smell her perfume wafting from the pages. Agree with Norman Mailer who said he "would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany's"

I’ve been thinking about Capote lately. Read To Kill a Mockingbird ,heard about the huge snit he was in over Harper Lee winning the Pulitzer; how despite all her help when he was struggling to write In Cold Blood he still ended a lifetime friendship over it. Then I read Rules of Civility and thought Amor, you sly devil - you've been watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” haven't you...I saw the film years ago, vaguely remembered so I thought I'd read the book. Surprise... It’s entirely different from the movie and FAR better. Audrey Hepburn the classic example of miscasting. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Audrey, her pearls, her little black dress – along with Grace Kelly she’s an icon of sophistication – what she is not is Holly Golightly. I've now discovered that Capote and I are in perfect agreement.
'The movie became a mawkish valentine to New York City,’ he said, 'and as a result was thin and pretty, whereas it should have been rich and ugly.’
Poor Truman, seems he couldn’t catch a break…

Cons: To short, I wanted more. I usually pass on novellas for this reason. The other characters could have been more developed, Holly’s story felt unfinished. Agree with Mailer - he shouldn’t have changed 2 words, just think he needed to add a couple of thousand more. 3 ½ stars rounded to 4

“The answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.”
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Annabeth_96
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
... Show More
Die wenigstens, die für den Film “Frühstück bei Tiffany” schwärmen, werden die Romanvorlage von Truman Capote. Ich zähle auch dazu. Schon als Junge fand ich die selbstbewusste Art, wie die wunderschöne Audrey Hepburn die Holly Golightly spielt, einfach faszinierend. Kann man sich wirklich von einem so prägenden Film lösen, wenn man den Kurzroman (oder die lange Kurzgeschichte?) liest? Nein, es ging nicht. Ich hatte permanent Audrey Hepburn in meinem Kopfkino.

Das verklärt die Sichtweise auf das Buch. Wenn ich aber mal versuche, den Text losgelöst von den Bildern auf mich wirken zu lassen, dann wundert es mich, dass man aus seiner Vorlage ein solchen Film machen kann. In manchen Szene blitzt der Charme und die Eigensinnigkeit von Holly im Roman durch, aber die langen Monologe ihrer Verehrer, Nachbarn, Ex-Ehemänner nehmen ein viel größeren Raum im Buch ein, als mir das lieb war. Es war interessant, den Roman zu lesen. Er löste aber bei mir nicht das intensive Gefühl des Films aus. Das Buch wirkt etwas hektisch und geschwätzig, während der Film auch mal eine Szene in seiner Ruhe wirken lassen kann. Beispielsweise wie Holly in der Eingangsszene in den Morgenstunden in die Schaufenster von Tiffany’s schaut, einen Donut ist, noch im Abendkleid von der nächtlichen Party, den Kopf dabei hin und her dreht. Diese Sehnsucht nach dem Schönen und dem Kostbaren kommt da ganz ohne Worte aus. Das Buch ist lesenswert, der Film ist aber noch sehenswerter.
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.