Book – Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

This is a strange book. It’s from 1958 and yet I pick up a hard cover from Birmingham library. And its tiny, a really slim book.But the strangest thing; it doesn’t have chapters!I’m wondering whether I have picked up a somewhat edited version?I only got into the film in recent years and I it’s an absolute delight when I come across it by chance on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. It’s perfect for the moment when you get in from whatever fun and frolics you get up to at the weekend and plan to get a quick coffee or snack before getting on with whatever you have planned. Before you know it, an hour or so goes by and the film is nearly finished anyway so you just carry on watching until the end.I had no idea what the film was about before I first managed to catch it and thereby starting the addiction. I only knew that it was a misdemeanour to not to have ever seen it.  It’s the second book I’ve read in succession that has been made into a film, the last being ‘Notes on a Scandal’. With the memory of the Tiffany film fairly intact, the book was scandalisingly different. The plot of the film stayed true to the story but what happened between the beginning and end seemed quite dissimilar. If my memory serves me at all well, Holly Golightly was never in hospital suffering a post-arrest miscarriage and cursing was almost certainly never undertaken.The film is an innocent look at a young girl’s arrival in New York and how she manages to wrap her not so innocent finger around any man she chooses to do what she wanted them to do, stopping short of actual manipulation. There’s only a hint of promiscuity whereas the book has Ms Go lightly admitting the lifestyle although in her mind she was always in love with each man. Well almost.She was most certainly the typical, fictionalised, hopeless romantic although not so much when it came to loving New York City. Unlike today’s film and TV characters who have laden this point to the point of saccharinisation. To Holly, New York was just a city she was passing through and she didn’t yet belong anywhere. The pressure was not on the city to fulfil all her hopes and dreams.This is my first Truman Capote book having studied him at writing school and the book is more him than the film version. His descriptions are amazing and bring the story to life and the reader right behind each character, just as I have learnt but am a long way from accomplishing.Even stranger than the story being so short and the frustratingly lack of chapters, there are another 50 pages of much more Capote-esque short stories at the end! Answers on a postcard please.  7½/10   Inspiration 7½/10 but only for writing practice