Review to come later when I'm feeling more inspired.

One of the most beautiful stories I have ever read--a true idea of family values and loyalty, though a completely unconventional family.

After struggling through a good amount of the titular story, I remembered that I had already filled my eccentric, eclectic, old lady quota by having watched "Grey Gardens" twice in my life. That was a much shorter, and more pleasant, experience.
If there is a quirky, cluttered, senior citizen-shaped hole in your life, I recommend taking that cinematic path to filling it. Not this overly-flowery literary one.
If you are of a more morbid inclination (and/or drawn to what is sometimes termed a "May-December Romance", but in actuality is more a "Nineteen Eighties-Great Depression Romance") I suppose you could alternately view "Harold & Maude".

This is an utterly charming novella with all the qualities of a good fairy tale. I've always thought that Truman Capote is the bastard child of Eudora Welty and Tennessee Williams. This book is definitely on the Eudora Welty side of the equation, although it also reminds me in moments of We Have Always Lived at the Castle.

This is a tale of misfits, of the freedom of refusing to fit in, and of what it takes to make yourself and your family. The language is elegiac and the relationships are sweet, heartfelt, and complex. Everyone in this book is looking for love, for a place to be - the treehouse at the top of the china tree brings them all together and holds them peaceful in its arms.

There is, of course, the town and its folk who stand in opposition to the people of the tree and who, ultimately, bring the idyll to an end leaving only the shadows of voices on the wind.

What remains for me is the image of the kitchen with its smells of sweet and savory things baking, the sound of conversation on a hot day, and the bowl of goldfish swimming lazily in their bowl.

Poppycock : Capote, searching for his voice, bakes a pretentious poppyseed cake with an excess of passion-fruit curds.

It was a reading group that directed me to this book and I am very thankful for this advice. The title story “A Grass Harp” is “poetry in form of prose” as one group member put it. Capote is a master of painting with words, visible in expressions like “the snowflake of Dolly’s face”, “eyes … luminously green as mint jelly” or “the kitchen was warm as a cow’s tongue”. The story is deeply engulfed in humanity. The main characters the narrator boy Colling, Aunt Dolly, her coloured friend and help Catherine and Judge Cool defy the indifference and callousness of the people of a Southern town and retreat to a tree house. The regular society of the town cannot allow for such an unheard thing and forces them to give up. A young man gets shot in the shoulder, but the event has no other major consequences. Still the people involved come out of it changed.

The story reminded me in many ways of “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. It plays in a remote, rural town, central characters are a child and a judge, and they display the same fierce attitude towards injustice and racism.

Among the other stories of the book I liked most “Children on their Birthdays” and “A Jug of Silver”, both again displaying Capote’s mastery picture strong, exceptional children, their struggles and view of the world. The 4-star rating is only to be contributed to those other stories that were less my taste.

I was somewhat surprised to find that this book was written after Other Voices, Other Rooms, as it reads like a nascent Capote finding his voice. It's not his masterwork, and it seems fluffy in comparison to his better works, but damn he could write a sentence like nobody this side of James Baldwin.

“The Grass Harp” is one of those hanging window prisms that throws trembling rainbows and patches of the whitest white light on the walls all around. It’s a perfect summer-into-fall novella, and, like many of Capote’s pieces, it has the slightly surreal quality of a fable (or maybe just a children’s story?), in that the narrative seems to take place in a world underpinned with danger but lived in (at least by the protagonists) as if the stakes are low and/or imaginary, even if they’re neither. I kept feeling a breeze of gently-poking-fun Twain humor wafting through, but it wasn’t really FUNNY funny, just...observant of how ridiculous people can be. And of course the writing is splendid:

“A candle flickered in a mason jar, and gipsy moths, balanced, blowing about the flame, seemed to pilot its scarf of yellow among the black branches.”

“The rain had thickened, fish could have swum through the air; like a deepening scale of piano notes, it struck its blackest chord, and drummed into a downpour that, though it threatened, did not at once reach us: drippings leaked through the leaves, but the tree-house stayed a dry seed in a soaking plant.”

“‘We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed—begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I’ve never mastered it—I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.’ // ‘Then,’ said Dolly with an intake of breath, ‘I have been in love my whole life....When I loved, love collected inside me so that it went flying about like a bird in a sunflower field. But it’s best not to show such things, it burdens people and makes them, I don’t know why, unhappy....I’m afraid of scaring people if I show that I care for them.’”

The other stories in this collection are also worth your time. “Children on Their Birthdays” is great.

I have just revisited "The Grass Harp" after reading it many, many years ago. It was even better this time around. Other than "In Cold Blood" it is probably my favorite Truman Capote story. Based on real people from his childhood, Capote crafted a magical tale of a young boy growing up with his two fictional older cousins, Verna who is harsh and consumed with the acquisition of more and more wealth and the other, Dolly who is a childlike waif who loves and appreciates the natural wonders that surround her. My favorite character is Catherine an orphan hired out as a child to the father of the sisters Verena and Dolly. Catherine Creek, the Negro family retainer who grew up with the sisters claims to be an Indian, is hardly a servant and is Dolly's only friend. The other short stories that are included in this volume are a welcome bonus and other than a "Tree of Night" they were entirely new to me.

Absolutely unreal! You have to read these books!

I pretty much can't stand Capote's short stories.

The Grass Harp just filled my heart. Even though it doesn't end with a bowl of cherries, it's such a lovely tale of life. A Tree of Night and the Other Stories all seemed to be "submitted for your approval" in the Twilight Zone -- these southern writers and their twisted endings! Jug of Silver reminded me so much of The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel -- the two strangers in town have a similar attraction.