Capote never intended for this novel to be published. He meant for it to be thrown out. This confirms my belief that good authors know when a piece of their work is not worthy of publication. I'm giving this 3 stars because it has a lot of that wonderful trademark Capote prose that just bowls me over sometimes. The story itself is mostly FLAT. Really just not a good plot at all. I was going to give it 2 stars until I got to the last couple of sentences. The ending was enough to warrant another star. Can't say I recommend the book, though, unless you really like the way Capote captured language, which I do.

I've never thought of Truman Capote as an especial favorite of mine, but each book of his I've read has hit me right in that sweet spot where wisdom, satire, tragedy, and longing come together, and I find myself hanging on every word and then doodling our initials within heart shapes all over my notebooks.

The jacket copy for "Summer Crossing" understands, calling the book a "precocious, confident first novel that displays...nearly perfect prose and flawless narrative," rife with "immaculate turns of phrase, hard irony, and insight into the subtleties of class distinction." Yes. Come to mama.

The plot vibes in some obvious ways like "Gatsby" (lordy but I love a trashy classic), and while it's easy to compare the main character to Holly Golightly, I thought she gave off bigger Frankie Addams energy (see who I compare *her* to in my review of "The Member of the Wedding"), and I think Capote really nailed her type. The book isn't perfect (the author sat on it for decades and said he didn't want to publish it, and he even once let it get put out with the trash), but it's a truly solid book, with wickedly good characterizations, spot-on teen musings, and a narrative built like a train engine bolting down the track with nothing to slow it down.

Some great stuff:

"She held fast to the balloon all through lunch, as if her own happiness bobbed and strained at the string."

"What infinite energies are wasted steeling oneself against crisis that seldom comes: the strength to move mountains; and yet it is perhaps this very waste, this torturous wait for things that never happen, which prepares the way and allows one to accept with sinister serenity the beast at last in view."

"It was wilting out on Lexington Avenue, and especially so since they'd just left an air-conditioned theater; with every step heat's stale breath yawned in their faces. Starless nightfall sky had closed down like a coffin lid, and the avenue, with its newsstands of disaster and flickering fly-buzz sounds of neon, seemed an elongated, stagnant corpse. The pavement was wet with a rain of electric color; passersby, stained by these humid glares, changed color with chameleon alacrity: Grady's lips turned green, then purple....Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing."

"Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living. Unfortunately, one mirror is as treacherous as another, reflecting at some point in every adventure the same vain unsatisfied face, and so when she asks what have I done? she means really what am I doing? as one usually does."

"What a sparkling, sun-slapped day for Grady McNeil..."

"It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy."
"She had liked to be alone, but not, as Lucy accused, to spend her time in listless moping, which is a vice of the highly domesticated, the naturally tame.

Ao que sei, os fãs de Truman Capote não gostam muito desta novela, não só porque a acham inferior ao resto da obra, mas também porque foi publicada postumamente, mas eu fiquei encantada. Uma escrita cristalina e certeira numa história que, não sendo perfeita e tendo personagens algo irritantes, nos faz recuar ao primeiro Verão de liberdade e excessos, sem os pais em casa.

It makes sense that Capote may have wanted this novella, his first book, to go unpublished. It is a tough read - not even in the sense of plot or feeling so much as the sentences are often laborious to get through and the flimsy story was not worth the effort.

There was a reason why Truman Capote didn't finish this story- it was terrible. Discovered years after his death in a cache of his papers, it had been written early in his writing career and lacked finesse. The main character Grady was aged too young (just aging her two more years would have made it more convincing), her inner thoughts were not believable and the premise of her being left alone while her parents traveled overseas would not have happened in upper-class society of the 1940s. While Grady is an unlikable protagonist in the entire narrative, her out-of-nowhere decision on the last page was written for shock value only.

It is sadly ironic that Capote's childhood friend Harper Lee also had an early manuscript of hers published so late in her life that there are questions if she truly made an informed decision if she wanted Go Set a Watchman to see the light of day. The public is not owed work that the author didn't want to share.

«Lasciarono che nella stanza calasse l'oscurità: la superficie morbida e flessibile delle loro voci si muoveva e sospirava attorno a loro, e anche se dicevano cose del tutto prive d'importanza era già tanto che potessero usare le stesse parole, applicare gli stessi valori”.
Grady O’Neil, diciassettenne figlia di una delle più prestigiose famiglie newyorkesi, approfitta dell’assenza dei genitori, partiti per una vacanza estiva, per stare con il fidanzato Clyde Manzer, parcheggiatore ebreo con cui ha instaurato una relazione segreta. I giorni trascorrono rapidi, l’estate va avanti e tanti sono i risvolti di questo amore burrascoso, morboso e indecifrabile. Infantile, ingenua ed immatura, Grady, è preda di emozioni che non sa gestire, di una voglia di vivere e di assaporare che non ha confini tanto che finisce col ritrovarsi invischiata in situazioni al limite. A complicare il tutto si aggiunge la presenza di Peter Bell, amico di famiglia, di lei da sempre segretamente innamorato. In appena un centinaio di pagine il libricino prende forma caratterizzandosi per l’essere una perfetta fotografia di quella società newyorkese illuminata dalla scintillante Central Park ed offuscata dalla squallida quotidianità di Brooklyn, e distinguendosi per la presenza di questi personaggi eclettici e peculiari. Se la giovane è mossa dall’inquietudine, dalla bramosia, dalla fame di vivere, i due ragazzi, Peter e Clyde, sono gli opposti della sua esistenza, individui che prendono forma e sostanza soltanto quando presenti nel suo cono di luce, nonché sintesi delle contraddizioni che la medesima incarna e rappresenta.
Seppur breve presenta uno spaccato di letteratura da conoscere ed apprezzare per la sua essenza e la sua storia.

one of my new favorite literary excerpts:
he loved her, he loved her, and until he’d loved her she had never minded being alone, she’d liked too much to be alone. at school, where all the girls had crushes on one another and trailed in sweetheart pairs, she had kept to herself: except once, and that was when she’d allowed naomi to adore her. naomi, scholarly, and bourgeois as a napkin ring, had written her passionate poems that really rhymed, and once she’d let naomi kiss her on the lips. but she had not loved her: it is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy: she could not envy any girl, only men: and so naomi became mislaid in her thoughts, then lost, like an old letter, one which had never been carefully read. she had liked to be alone, but not, as [her mother] accused, to spend her time in listless moping, which is a vice of the highly domesticated, the naturally tame: there pumped through her a nervous wild vigor that every day demanded steeper feats, more daring exertions: the police warned [her father] about her driving; twice she was caught on the merritt parkway making eighty and over. it wasn’t a lie when she told the arresting officers that she’d had no idea how fast she was going: speed numbed her, turned out the lights in her mind, most of all it deadened a little the excess of feeling that made personal contacts so painful. others struck the keys too hard, and too loud were the chords she played back. think of steve bolton. and clyde [manzer], too. but he loved her. he loved her. if the telephone would ring. perhaps it will if i don’t look at it; it does that sometimes. or was he in terrible trouble, was that why it never rang? poor mrs. manzer, weeping, and ida [manzer], shouting, and clyde: go home, i’ll call you later, those were his exact words, and how long could she endure it, alone among stopped clocks and heat-hushed sounds that faded at the windows? she sank on the bed, her blue-flooded head slipping sleepily downward.

The Times described it as “The lost novel that inspired Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but in my opinion, it should have stayed lost. It does little more than highlight the author’s lack of creativity.

It is hard to be too critical of a book that was not intended by its author to be published and therefore was not edited for publication.

It is a nicely written novella about a memorable summer in the life of a naive and foolish girl. Worth a read if you like Capote and post-WW2 New York stories.

Capote’s posthumously published novella is a sunlit fever dream, a story where the heat of New York City in July seems to seep into every sentence, blurring the line between passion and recklessness.

Grady McNeil, a seventeen-year-old heiress left to her own devices in her parents’ Fifth Avenue penthouse, spirals into a love affair with Clyde Manzer, a parking attendant whose world is as far from hers as Brooklyn is from Park Avenue. Capote’s language here is a tightrope strung between elegance and chaos, each word a step closer to the inevitable fall. Grady’s descent is not sudden but deliberate: “She was a flame, and she knew it, but she didn’t care if she burned.”

The novella brims with moments that sting like salt in a wound. Grady’s decision to abandon her family’s expectations and elope with Clyde is both impulsive and inevitable, a collision of privilege and desperation. Her pregnancy, revealed in a scene where she stares at her reflection as though seeing herself for the first time, becomes a ticking clock, counting down to disaster. The shattering of a perfume bottle—a gift from her mother—is a moment of violent catharsis, the shards glinting like the fragments of her fractured identity.

Later, her sister Apple discovers the affair, leading to a confrontation that steams with unspoken envy and sibling rivalry. A car crash, a literal and metaphorical wreck, is a twist of the knife that pivots the story from romance to ruin: “The rain fell like tears, but no one was crying.”

Capote infuses Summer Crossing with a sly autobiographical wink. Like Grady, he was a restless soul, chafing against the constraints of his upbringing. The novella’s portrayal of female desire, a rarity in mid-20th-century literature, is nothing short of revolutionary. Grady is neither angel nor demon; she is a force of nature, her choices as unpredictable as a summer storm.

The book’s history is as dramatic as its plot—nearly lost to a house fire, it resurfaced decades later, a relic of Capote’s early genius. It’s a high-wire act of a book, and Capote is the ringmaster, cracking his whip with a wicked grin.

Putea fi o poveste scurtă sau putea fi un roman mai amplu – nu este niciuna dintre cele două. Este dezamăgitor, cu tot cu munca asiduă și benevolentă a editorilor, să citești un astfel de text de la unul dintre autorii tăi preferați; nu există alt termen decât „incomplet”. Se simte că este un draft, orice ar fi. Există rupturi, goluri ce ar fi trebuit umplute (de autor, nu de editori). Nu cred că voi mai face greșeala de a citi astfel de manuscrise regăsite fiindcă pur și simplu „nu fac dreptate” autorului.

Recenzie completă: https://cristinaboncea.com/2025/02/25...

Characters are not well developed. The setting of New York City is beautifully written. Abrupt ending.