Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and 3 short stories

 by Truman Capote

Reviewed by Gerti

I read Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” many years ago, and knew him to be a very talented writer. Like that iconic book, the short novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” also went Hollywood, starring gorgeous waif Audrey Hepburn, whom everyone remembers from “My Fair Lady,” and a very handsome George Peppard, whom no one remembers. “Tiffany’s” is found in a very tiny volume, perhaps 5” by 7”, 161 pages in all, and that also includes 3 short stories, so it’s no surprise the filmmakers had to add (and change) a lot to make a movie. Of course, the book is better than the movie, but you should experience both for contrast.

His writing is clever, but tight, and Capote excels when writing descriptions, like that of heroine Holly Golightly and her big city lifestyle. The plot and motivations are weaker and decidedly unromantic, and perhaps that’s why filmmaker Blake Edwards decided to change things, like the ending, for his movie audience. He also significantly changed the male narrator, whom Holly calls “Fred”, into a gigolo, which I don’t think was what Capote intended for his narrator at all. Edwards cuts some of the characters from Capote’s novel for simplicity’s sake, but then adds others to go along with his re-tooling of Capote’s tale.

Taken in its entirety, the Capote book, complete with the 3 short stories which follow “Tiffany’s”, has Truman writing about quirky characters, and the relationships they have with others. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Capote seems concerned with the essence of these people, and the phony persona’s they present to the world. For example, charming urbanite Holly Golightly is actually Lulamae Barnes, a run-away bride from Tulip, Texas, who lives in New York by her wits and tricks. In the short story “House of Flowers,” which follows the novel, the protagonist is a female prostitute, a very young and popular one in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who falls in love, and then has to deal with the cruelty of her husband and his grandmother when she leaves the business behind to marry him. She cannot really escape the past, as her prostitute friends pay her a visit in her new home. Similarly in “Tiffany’s,” Lulamae’s husband, aging veterinarian Dr. Golightly, comes to NYC to convince her to come home to her children. Neither woman goes back, and perhaps here Capote is trying to say that you can never go back to what you were in this life, that the only way is to continue going forward, even if it’s in another direction, and love plays no part in how the story ends.

That’s why the movie’s ending to me is so wrong, for it has Holly staying in New York, taking back her cat and giving in to her love for “Fred.” This doesn’t happen in the book, and I think it doesn’t exactly because of the point Capote was trying to make about one’s past. The other two stories, “A Diamond Guitar” and “A Christmas Memory”, both resonate to the same note – things happen in life that separate us irrevocably from our past, and the people who dwell there, and while we can think fondly about it, and them, we really can’t return.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Reading Level: Adult Fiction

Submitted by Gerti

Back in the days when I taught a short story class to college freshmen, Sandra Cisneros was one of the authors the school chose for me to teach them. The story they chose of hers was called “The House on Mango Street,” and it comes from this collection of vignettes, published back in 1984. I never liked it as much as some of the other stories I had to teach, and I was amazed every semester that the students I taught at the New Hampshire technical college always responded so well to it.

Cisneros writes this story collection about the daily life, dreams and encounters of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. We see the house she lives in, and meet her family, neighbors, friends and teachers, and despite her simple “young girl” language, the characters are distinctly if not completely drawn. We meet the landlord, the crazy cat lady, and the teenaged neighbor girl who does the baby sitting who is desperate to escape that street and that life. We see the desperation and “harsh reality” of the area, symbolized by a beautiful hidden garden that gradually gets filled with junker cars after the hard-working Asian family who tended it moves away. We see the girl Esperanza’s shame at the shabbiness of her house, and her growing desire to exceed expectations and leave the area to become someone different from her own mother, someone who lives up to their dreams and is not burdened by raising children.

The critics still like this book more than do I, and they heap praise on Cisneros’ writing. “Marvelous… spare yet luminous” reads the blurb from the San Francisco Chronicle writer, although I would only agree with the word “spare.” “Deeply moving” writes the critic from the Miami Herald, and once again, I disagree. I find too much of Cisneros’s anger in the vignettes, and am uncomfortable with her obviously biographical “voice”. I find it more poignant than delightful, as spare as poetry but without a poet’s skill. I don’t find her “one of the most brilliant of today’s young writers” as Gwendolyn Brooks says, and find the pictures Cisneros’ draws as difficult to access and understand as a blue period Picasso.

The only story that sings for me (with the clever line “Today we are Cinderella”) is the one where Esperanza and her sisters are given second-hand shoes to wear. The young girls run up and around the neighborhood wearing the fashionable footware, until they realize that the high heels have turned them into sexual objects to the men in the neighborhood, and then they hide the shoes away until they are thrown out. Only in this story do I hear the shrill note of the neighborhood, and feel the fear and sobriety that is the undercurrent of living there.

I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t want to read more by Cisneros in this style. But at least I can say now that I’ve read the whole book, and “it’s not her, it’s me.”

Enthralled by Various Authors

Reading Level: Young Adult
(4 out of 5)

I came across Enthralled because I wanted to read the story in it by Kelley Armstrong.  Then after I kept reading it because it had so many great stories by the other great authors.  My only complaint is that I hate short stories.  They are just too short.  They just start to get really good and then they are over.  But this anthology has quite a few authors in it that have short stories from their series.

Kelley Armstrong's Facing Facts continues Chloe Saunders story from The Darkest Powers series.

Melissa Marr's Merely Mortal has Keenan and Donia from her Wicked Lovely series.

Jeri Smith-Ready's Bridge is about Logan from her Shade trilogy.

I found a great new book series and author Kimberly Derting (reviews to come) her story Skin Contact is wrapped in the world of her Body Finder Series.

Rachel Caine's Automatic is about Michael from her Morganville series.

There are several other great stories and they may have to do with series but I'm not familiar with them.

A Darcy Christmas by Amanda Grange, Sharon Lanthan & Carolyn Eberhart

This is not the first compilation of stories based on Jane Austen's great novel "Pride and
Prejudice" that I have found lacking. But it is perhaps the most disappointing, mainly
because included in the trio of authors writing about Regency Christmas celebrations is
the fabulous Amanda Grange, who has done a series of masterful diaries by the male
heroes from several Austen novels. This work is way beneath Grange's usual standard.

The first story is written by relative newcomer to the genre Carolyn Eberhart, and while
her contribution is the strongest, the story itself is derivative. Eberhart chooses to write a
twist on the classic "A Christmas Carol" story by Victorian writer Charles Dickens. In this
version, it is Fitzwilliam Darcy, heartthrob hero of "Pride and Prejudice" who is visited by
the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The point of the visitations is that he
should marry Elizabeth Bennet, the woman he falls in love with in the Austen novel, but
who is saddled with a family that would make any prospective bridegroom blanch, not
only because of their lack of money and social status, but also because of their lack of
restraint and decorum. The story ends happily, but a reader of this collection needs to
gather up courage to go any further.

The second part of the holiday tribute to Jane Austen is written by Amanda Grange. It
involves Elizabeth Bennet, now Mrs. Darcy, having her first child around Christmas
time. Mr. Darcy is traumatized out of fear for his wife due to the memories he has of his
mother and her difficulty in childbirth. Doesn't sound like this tale is filled with Christmas
cheer, but at least it includes a cast of characters with whom most P & P fans are
familiar - like Lady Catherine de Bough, Mr. Collins, the Bingley's, and of course
Elizabeth's meddlesome mother. A true Austen fan can read it and enjoy it, but should
absolutely put the book down after this.

The third short story, written by Sharon Lathan, is an interminable read and impossible
to follow. It is the worst of the 3 stories in this Christmas collection, and is written in a
manner that I hate - where Lathan takes the original characters from P & P, and adds
generations, meaning that the reader needs pen and paper nearby to keep track of all
the new additions to the Darcy and Bingley clans. Lathan gives Elizabeth and

Fitzwilliam Darcy not just one or two but a pile of children, and then adds to the
confusion by giving those children lovers and children of their own. The Bingley's are
also included in this name-fest, which seems more like an exploded Baby Name Book
than a cohesive story. I find it tedious to try to keep track of who belongs to whom, when
none of the characters is well delineated and the writing is sooo out of synch with
Austen's own style. Lathan's sexual innuendos seem out of place when the style she is
basing her work on was so innocent and restrained. Basically, it took me 5 weeks just to
finish this boring story before the book was due back at the library. Just terrible. I
wouldn't have finished it at all if I hadn't had to write this review! Avoid at all costs.

Submitted by Gerti

Dancing With Mr. Darcy short stories compiled by Sarah Waters

I was so excited when I found this book at the library, because I've made it a point to read all the books regarding Jane Austen and her various fictional characters. This anthology, however, sadly misses the mark for me as a reader. Because of my nature, call it compulsive if you will, it is a very rare book that I will not read from beginning to end, whether or not I'm enjoying myself. It is shocking to me that while reading this collection of short stories, how often I had to force myself to keep reading, and how often I couldn't stand what I was reading. I've worked as a teacher of freshman composition, and I can honestly say, there were only one or two essays or stories I couldn't stand over the years. This collection contains at least a half dozen writings that fall into that category.

Don't get me wrong. There are one or two short stories in this book which are well-written and worth being included in a published anthology. But others are simply abhorrent and go against everything in the very nature of an Austen fan. Most seem like the well written but immature ramblings of teenaged Austen fans, as so many of these stories share the common themes of passing college-level exams, or doing things of which parents don't approve. Some other stories are beyond imagining - which is to say, that I can't imagine writing a story based on Austen that involves a character with her pants around her ankles, characters walking around in the whiffy waste of an overflowed toilet, or a story in which the main character poses in the nude and has the vocabulary of a longshoreman. Not to say that Austen didn't have a pragmatic edge, or that her characters didn't occasionally use the toilet, step in poo or appear in the nude, but the disconnect between the original subject matter and some of these stories is just too great. Perhaps the fault lies with me, but I can't bridge that gulf. As a result, this collection of stories is something I regret having read. Readers who love Jane Austen would be much better served reading authors like Joan Aiken or Carrie Bebris than wasting their time with this nonsense. As Mr. Knightley would say in Emma, "Badly Done."

Submitted by Gerti

Love is Hell by Marr, Westerfeld, Larbalestier, Zevin, and Stolarz

Reading Level: Young Adult

(4 out of 5)

Sometimes I love to read short stories. I like that they are short and to the point. This book has a couple of authors I really like so I had to give it a try. Scott Westerfeld's story Stupid Perfect World was my favorite but they were all good. Gabrielle Zevin's story Fan Fictions was weird even for me and I'm not sure I liked it or not. I'm still rolling it around in my head. The other stories are Sleeping with the Spirit by Laurie Faria Stolarz, Thinner Than Water by Justine Larbalestier, and Love Struck by Melissa Marr.

From the back cover: "In these supernatural stories by five of today's hottest writers love may be twisted and turned around, but it's more potent than ever on its quest to conquer all.

From two students who let the power of attraction guide them to break the hard and fast rules of their world to the girl who falls hard for a good looking ghost with a score to settle, the clever, quirky characters in this exciting collection will break your heart, then leave you believing in love more than ever."