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mulders's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
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.
It is incredibly hard to find just one quote to use in this review. I swear I highlighted every other page of the book, Capote is such an emoting, vivid, madman of a writer that the simplest moments of humanity in his work feel like a gut punch. Grady is a lovely protagonist fitting of the story; a timeless picture of a teenage girl wise beyond her years who is ultimately just as naive as she thinks she isn't. Clyde makes for an extraordinary love interest— a man who first seems cold and disinterested and slowly reveals himself to be a beautiful, bleeding heart— but an even better deuteragonist: the shift in point of view from Grady's to Clyde's comes halfway through the book and knocked the wind right out of me, breaking my heart in hindsight.
A short novel of a whirlwind summer romance that starts off sunny and languid and hurtles towards a shining, dizzying, abrupt end. Truman Capote was and remains the greatest.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Racial slurs, and Pregnancy