Three by Truman Capote: Other Voices, Other Rooms; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Music for Chameleons (Complete and Unabridged)

358 pp. Three books in one: Other Voices, Other Rooms; Breakfast at Tiffany's; Music for Chameleons. Other Voices, Other Rooms: At the age of twelve, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully's Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face - and heart - of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love. Breakfast at Tiffany's: Truman Capote's provocative, naturalistic masterstroke about a young writer's charmed fascination with his unorthodox neighbour, the "American geisha" Holly Golightly. Holly - a World War II-era society girl in her late teens - survives via socialisation, attending parties and restaurants with men from the wealthy upper class who also provide her with money and expensive gifts. Over the course of the novella, the seemingly shallow Holly slowly opens up to the curious protagonist, who eventually gets tossed away as her deepening character emerges. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's most beloved work of fiction, introduced an independent and complex character who challenged audiences, revived Audrey Hepburn's flagging career in the 1961 film version, and whose name and style has remained in the national idiom since publication. Music for Chameleons: Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise; and a proper Connecticut householder with a ruinous obsession for a twelve-year-old he has never met. And we meet Capote himself, who, whether he is smoking with his cleaning lady or trading sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe, remains one of the most elegant, malicious, yet compassionate writers to train his eye on the social fauna of his time.