Breakfast at Tiffany's (Vintage International) Kindle Edition

I've heard about Breakfast at Tiffany's for years and finally got around to reading it. I'm kicking myself for waiting so long!In Breakfast at Tiffany's, we meet Holly Golightly, a young woman who just can't seem to find a place where she belongs. She can't settle. The narrator, her friend and would-be boyfriend (if she asked), tells the story of Holly's various adventures. It's not just her story, though. It's also the narrator's, and reading this story is almost like a coming-of-age story crossed with a romance crossed with something akin to slice-of-life.It's so, so rare to read a book with a narrative voice as strong as in Breakfast at Tiffany's. All the descriptions are perfect. The mood-setting is perfect. The characterization is amazing. I know some people complain about the length of the story, but think of what Breakfast at Tiffany's is really *about*: finding some place you belong, your home. That kind of story can't go on too long. It would be depressing. For those of us nearing middle age who haven't found our home, I can tell you it *is* depressing. No, the story is just right.This book also includes a story called House of Flowers. In House of Flowers, we meet the vain, albeit illiterate, Ottilie. Ottilie has been "picked up" into, say, a finer society on the basis of her looks, although her friends recognize her intelligence. When her friends talk about love, Ottilie realizes she's never felt it and seeks out a Houngan to help her. All she has to do is hold a bee. If it doesn't sting her, she's found love.Ottilie does discover love with a man named Royal Bonaparte. But there's a problem: Old Bonaparte, a nasty old woman determined to make Ottilie's life miserable, and her husband's reaction to Ottilie's solution.This is one of those stories where you leave thinking the main character has no self-respect and that maybe she took the "wise old mentor's" advice a little too seriously. After Breakfast at Tiffany's, House of Flowers was a huge let-down.In A Diamond Guitar, we meet Mr Schaeffer, one of a couple hundred prisoners in a farm where they perform labor. One day, a Cuban boy, Tico, is brought to the farm after being caught cutting up some sailors, and he has a "guitar with jewels all over it". The two become fast friends.But with his guitar, Tico brings to mind what the men have lost beyond the farm. Many of them--Mr Schaeffer included--are there basically for the rest of their lives. There's something going on with Tico, too. Finally, he convinces Mr Schaeffer to make a run for it with him.An excellent story, sad as hell. There's not much more you can say about this one. You need to read it to understand.Finally, we have A Christmas Morning, with an old woman and her 7-year-old cousin, "Buddy". Buddy is enlisted, as usual for this time of year, to help his cousin make fruitcakes. The story is almost a study in contrasts as the two go about making fruitcakes, but not so much between Buddy and his cousin, but rather between the two and the family that doesn't like them much, and between Buddy's cousin and the life she hasn't lived (and has no interest in, it seems), and where the old goes and the young goes. The two are what should be an inseparable pair, but life rolls on.A very sweet, very sad story. Reminds me a lot of my grandpa before he died. We were best friends. The family often snapped at us. I grew up and got busy with a career, and the cancer found its way to grandpa's brain. That's how the world turns, isn't it? You make an old friend when you're young, and as you go, so do they.This is an excellent collection. I will almost certainly read more from this author when I get the chance.

I decided to read Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of the iconic movie in which Audrey Hepburn plays the eccentric 19-year-old Holly Golightly. I was drawn into the complexity of her character and her somewhat posh lifestyle. Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s holds a mysterious aspect to its characters, which compelled me to read more. The fact that I didn’t know too much about the narrator allowed me to experience Holly Golightly under more detail. What made the story so unique was the narration technique Capote used. By making the narrator exist as an extension of Holly, readers could experience his infatuation for her.What really made this book stand out was Capote’s sensitivity and attention to details. Holly’s New York is quite visceral and it’s almost as though I could experience the high end, New York lifestyle in real life. Holly appears an illusion and twists into any shape the people in her life expect her to be. Holly is a walking contradiction, and her mystery only increases with the numbers on the pages. She seems to know nothing about the world, yet she always seems to be one step ahead, knowing just what to say and how to act. Capote writes Holly as a person who listens only to her heart, breaks the rules and doesn't really care about the future. She is the kind of woman that can’t be tamed and who is in a continual search for the place, which she calls "home". I wished Capote had evolved Holly Golightly more as a character. When she runs away to Buenos Aires, the narrator and myself were left with many questions. Has she forgotten about her friend and that's the reason why she never writes to him? Where did her affairs bring her? Did she find that perfect place where she felt like at Tiffany's? Overall, I was pleased with the book and its wholly captivating flight into fancy composed of comedy, romance, poignancy, and Manhattan's East Side areas captured in the loveliest of colors.Michelle T.

I just discovered Truman Capote and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and am absolutely mesmerized and delighted with the carefree rebellious Holly Golightly, living a wild life in her own crazy terms. A shortbeautiful story. All the other stories are also very good specially the last one, particularly heartbreaking and heartwarming. What an amazing writer