3 delicious hours of audio read by Mr. Michael C. Hall aka Dexter!!! What a wonderful performance of Truman Capote's novella! I saw the movie years ago but I've never read the book! I'm so happy to have listened to this edition of the audio!

5+++++Stars for the narrator!

5 Stars for the story!

Highly highly recommended!!!

I enjoyed this novella, although I was kind of distracted while listening.

Have you noticed how much one can get away with when one is young and beautiful? Even the smartest of men seem to get their neurons on ice when in the presence of a delightful young morsel.
Case in point - Holly Golightly (I loved the name). She's nineteen, elusive and allusive - you know her but you don't really know her. She's a New York socialite, who counts on rich men to keep her.
She's a survivor. She's canny and naive; she's focused and disorderly. She's mean and she's sweet. She's one contradictory woman. (I hear you men saying - aren't all women?)

All is not what it seems.Discovering some aspects of Holly's past, added to her complexities and made her more sympathetic.

I was surprised to notice a pro-gay partnership idea in there, considering when it was written.

Now I feel like watching the movie adaptation.

And now to finally watch the movie.... which may take as long as it's taken me to finally read this.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's", was a delightful film. I consider it a classic! As for the novel, well... I didn't know there was a novel! A novel by Truman Capote, whom I am not familiar with until Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing him. I was fortunate enough to discover this book in the library.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a little deceptive since it seems like a pretty easy read. It can be a bit funny, but I realized it has a more somber tone than the the film and there are some pretty serious issues throughout the course of the story. It also presents a heroine who you might not like very much (or at all), which presents another challenge.

Capote's attitude toward Holly can be different than your reaction to her, and I think this is part of his talent. He actually presents a lot of reasons to dislike Holly, but he is also careful to temper that with some information that probably elicits a sympathetic reaction to other parts of her life.The story doesn't gloss over her negative qualities, but it does present details that complicate these downfalls. This gives a better idea of why she does whatever she must to survive.

The tone is very different from the film, and there is no fairy-tale love in this story. Instead, you get a more realistic picture of love: complicated, messy, and sometimes extremely painful. The central theme seems to be more about looking forward to the future, and about the dreams, hopes, and plans we make for ourselves. In many ways these dreams sustain the characters, as they are propelled by the promise of something better than what the present can provide. But when these same hopes, and plans are shattered, it has devastating effects on the dreamers. Suddenly, they have to revise what they've been looking forward to, and this throws some characters into a tailspin as they're suddenly forced to reevaluate their lives. It was quite a different experience from the film and it's very thought provoking.

After reading the story, I actually appreciated the title and find it more relevant. Although Holly actually mentions Tiffany's (and having breakfast there) just a few times, I think her reference to it tells you a lot about her character. It's true that Tiffany's is expensive and that the things in it are out of her reach, but it's the idea of Tiffany's and the perfection that she associates with the store that makes her feel better when she's scared, sad, or angry. It's the belief that only good things happen there that makes Tiffany's so appealing to her. The title means so much, and all the while seems pretty insignificant. The novel is a masterpiece in its own right.

Για μένα πατρίδα είναι εκεί που αισθάνεσαι οτι βρίσκεσαι στο σπίτι σου. Και γώ το μέρος αυτό το ψάχνω ακόμα.

Απο τους πιο ζωντανούς χαρακτήρες που πέρασαν ποτέ απο το χαρτί. Άψογα σκιαγραφημένη, αλλοπρόσαλλα ρομαντική χωρίς όμως ποτέ να μπορούμε να την προσεγγίσουμε πλήρως και να την αποκρυπτογραφήσουμε. Εξου και η γοητεία της. Και το οτι βρίζει σαν νταλικέρης αλλα δυστυχώς δεν το γευτήκαμε σε όλο του το μεγαλείο αυτό το χάρισμα.

I really loved this - very immersive, with wonderful characterisation and a writing style that just completely caught me. I always enjoyed a looking back narrative and this was great.

I’m sure this was shocking when it was first published as I found parts of it quite jarring (the various racial slurs, the use of the word dyke). I love her name, Holly Golightly, an apt name for the character who we don’t know really, we see her through the eyes of the narrator, her one time neighbour. He doesn’t judge her lifestyle, just presents it. I think she’s a more complicated character than just a party girl; her childhood and marriage at age 14! and for much of the story she is still only 20 so I find it very hard to judge her cruelly. I didn’t hate this story but didn’t love it either, but I can see why it made an impression.

I’ve just spent the afternoon in the company of one Ms. Holiday Golightly, and I don’t know what to make of it. Holly has taken me on a whirlwind of a journey. Though our acquaintance was short, I feel I got to know her in a short amount of time. I am exhausted, puzzled and more than an eeny bit sad. It came left of centre, but the ending made me cry. I hope she made it to her happy place.

This is an absolute classic which had been sitting on one of my bookshelves for longer than I care to remember. The pages yellow spotted with age. A few months back I read Ian’s review (which I really enjoyed) and it made me wonder why I’d not read it yet.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

As I always say, timing is everything, and today was the right time. A gorgeous Autumn afternoon in Sydney. The sun slowly sinking in the sky and the afternoon getting cooler. The pages got less and less, and before I knew it, done. Tears streaming. I did not expect this.

”Suitcases and unpacked crates were the only furniture. The crates served as tables. One supported the mixings of a martini; another a lamp, a Libertyphone, Holly’s red cat and a bowl of yellow roses. Bookcases covering one wall, boasted a half shelf of literature, I warmed to the room at once. I liked its fly-by-night look.”

Of course I’ve seen the movie - umpteen times, it’s a favourite - and I’m always loathe to compare a written work to a film (though the movie is gorgeous). Yet I couldn’t help but have snippets of the movie playing on a reel in my head. But the writing... Now I understand. In exactly 100 pages, this snack sized novella conveys so much. The atmosphere of 1940s New York. A young girl inventing and re-inventing herself to find the family and love that she’d lost. Always searching for a place to call home. Breaking lots of hearts in the process, including her own.

And now I know the term for it, the mean reds, where you don’t know why, but you’re afraid. Brandy won’t help you. Nor aspirin or marijuana. The only thing that makes the angst settle is:

”What I’ve found does the most good is to just get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with their kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets.”

And what’s not to get all emotional about with a story having a No-name cat? Enough said.

”Mille tendresses.”

This is the story of a hot mess.
And that hot mess is named Holly Golightly.

And it's also the story of a young writer, named Paul Varjek who keeps giving and giving to the hot mess throughout the whole entire book. Paul obviously doesn't have a backbone!

If I had to rate the plot of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I would rate this around 3 to 3.5 stars.
Narration for the audiobook, I’m going with 5 stars.
Michael C. Hall was brilliant as a narrator and I would love to listen to more audiobooks by him!
Overall, I’ll go with 4 stars for this collaboration.

Trust me, you won’t like any of the characters in this book but oddly, you’ll still be interested and enjoy watching the house fire.



Holly Golightly is a schemer, a liar, a user and a survivor all rolled up in a pretty package wearing red lipstick, high heels and looking vogue. She’s interesting, detestable and glamorous.

The Holly Golightly in the book doesn’t seem like the character that Audrey Hepburn plays in the movie. I haven’t seen the movie so I'm not sure if my impression is correct.
I would like to see how they translate the character of Holly from the book to the big screen.

I can see how Holly Golightly became one of Truman Capote's best-known creations. He does write an interesting and complex character that’s not boring at all. You might want to punch her in the face but at least she’s not bland.

I don’t write reviews.

She tells the cat, “Beat it. I said fuck off!” He says “You are... you ARE a bitch.” Then she changes her mind. And that’s Holly. I think the reader should remember that.

Holly is not a good person. Audrey played her like a good person in the film. That’s okay, but like I said, Holly isn’t good inside, isn’t reliable, isn’t trustworthy. To make it even worse, she doesn’t learn from her mistakes. Each time is a rush into a confused decision she immediately regrets. That’s why we like her. That’s one reason we like her.

We can see aspects of ourselves in Holly: parts we think, parts we do, parts we wish we had the guts to do. Yet all the while we’re saying “Stop it already! Get it together woman!” However she’s not a woman, but a child who plays at womanhood. She’s only 19 (later 20) and my god I am nothing and everything that I was at that age, almost 20 years since.

What am I saying? I’m rambling. I guess I’m saying we’re all phonies in our own ways. What affectations we put on when it suits us! We’re all raw, honest people too. The masks we wear are as much of our true personalities as the things we think we really are. Capote understood this.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Truman Capote's Novella of Love or Something Like It

n  "If she was in this city I'd have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man like me, a man's been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he's got his eye out for one person, and nobody's ever her, don't it stand to reason she's not there? I see pieces of her all the time, a flat litle bottom, any skinny girl that walks fast and straight--...

It's just that I didn't know you'd been in love with her. Not like that."n

So it is we know that Holly Golightly is gone, that she's been gone for years. And she had her effect on Joe Bell, the bartender at that little place down on Lexington Avenue in the Big Apple.

n  n

Yeah, there's Joe's place. Look hard enough, it's one of those little places tucked away. You probably can't see it. One of those Yellow Cabs is hiding it. Yeah, Joe had it bad. Most men who knew her did, unless they just wanted to use her. There's always that niggling little thought on the nature of what love really is. That it is pure and natural or that it can be purchased. Anything is possible, after all, because everything is negotiable.

Truman Capote first published Breakfast at Tiffany'sin the November, 1958 issue of Esquire Magazine.

n  n

It was considered too obscene for Capote's usual sources for periodical publication, Harper's Baazar and Mademoiselle. After all, it's open to question as to whether Holly is a prostitute. And being a woman who speaks her mind, she wishes she could have a bull dyke for a roommate because they make such excellent housekeepers. Such language would never do, so it was off to Esquire. Random house followed suit, publishing "Tiffany's" as a novella.

n  n

What man hasn't known and loved a Holly Golightly. I have. I lost her. She was hit and killed by a drunk driver--hit her on the wrong side of the road. It was head on. She never had a chance. She was driving home on a Sunday evening, after dinner with her parents, her adopted parents.

She shared several characteristics with Holly Golightly. She didn't know her real parents. She enjoyed men. Her hair was that shining perfect blond with bands of white that made her always look as though the sun shone directly on her head and hers alone. She liked her men older, too, like Holly. Maybe it was being adopted, not knowing where she came from, not knowing where she truly belonged.

But Holly Golightly had taken a new identity, running away from Tulip, Texas, married at the age of fourteen to Doc Barnes, a veterinarian. Her real name is Lula Mae Barnes, just as Capote's mother's name had been Lillie Mae Faulk before she took a more sophisticated name, Nina, after she married Cuban business man Joe Capote.

I attended her funeral, one of so many, her male coterie. But it was when the minister pulled out a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit and began to read from it that I was stunned. For I gave her that book, in the hope, the dream that she would realize if you love anything enough it will become alive. She kept that book all the many years we were apart. Perhaps on some days she thought of me. I know that I still think of her and on some days, like Joe Bell, the bartender, I see bits and pieces of her as I walk the city streets, especially when the sun illuminates the gold, the white, the platinum of a feminine head of hair as if it showed on no other person on boulevard, no matter how bright the sun.

Oh, you say Holly Golightly was a brunette--like Audrey Hepburn. Well, that was Blake Edwards' idea of what Holly Golightly looked like. But it wasn't Capote's idea who should play her. It was Marilyn Monroe. No question. It was that blonde hair, almost platinum. But Capote only sold the film rights. He maintained no control over the direction or production of the film.

Capote was such a wonderful dancer. I can still remember photographs of him swirling Marilyn across the dance floor.

n  n

But Lee Strausberg told Marilyn playing Holly Golightly, a prostitute, wouldn't be good for her career. Monroe turned down the role for "The Misfits." It would be her last film. But that's another story.

History took its course. Henry Mancini composed "Moon River" for the score. George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn had chemistry. Following its release in 1961, Edwards' work became one of the iconic American films. However, it bears little resemblance to Capote's work, although Audrey Hepburn is stunning in that little black dress.

It was not uncommon that movies made from Faulkner's books premiered in Oxford, Mississippi. One, to Faulkner's chagrin, bore so little comparison to his original work, when called to the stage to make opening remarks, Faulkner said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the film you're about to see bears absolutely no resemblance to the book I wrote from which the title of this film was taken." He walked off stage and out of the theatre. I can't imagine Capote taking that approach, he was still connected to a famous film that led to further sales of his work. Perhaps it was that desire for fame that ultimately destroyed Capote.

Of course, in the novella, the young writer is unpublished. Holly takes it upon herself to make him famous by introducing him to her Hollywood agent. In the movie, Peppard is a kept man, whose, shall we say, sponsor, is played by Patricia Neal, who is known to Holly as 2E, the lady's apartment number. And, of course, the movie ends happily ever after with George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn embracing in the rain and having found "Cat" whom Holly had kicked out of the taxi cab.

But Capote tells Holly's view regarding love, or whatever feeling she is capable of describing as love.

n   "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."n

Truman Capote considered Holly Golightly his favorite character. I think he was right in his feelings. Of course, Capote, has said that the narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany's was gay. In fact, it has been repeatedly surmised that Holly Golightly is the literary embodiment of Christopher Isherwood's Sally Bowles. What divine decadence. The movie would never have ended the way it did, had Capote maintained creative control.

Let's just say this one will always touch a nerve in me. This one is for all the Holly Golightlys in the world and the Joe Bells who have the sense to listen to them, and I offer it with all the heartfelt sympathy I can muster for those who can't understand what it means to love a wild thing.

“The hottest kitten ever to hit the typewriter keys of Truman Capote.”

Holly Golightly is all wit and color in her seductive movement throughout the story. She uses charm as her currency for she is a force of nature. And she’s got just as many personas as sips one would take at a wine tasting event. One thing is for sure, she’s intoxicating. Holly reminds me of that Winston Churchill quote, “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.” Yup, that’s her. She does it with style, darling.

"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell”. - Holly