A] seductive spellbinding debut... Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege S Magazine, Sunday Express The Swans in the novel are I think based on real-life characters, but exactly who I didn't get. As another character says: Hannah forms a friendship with a nonagenarian former actress although she doesn’t discover the truth about her until it’s too late.

Tom Stoppard (4 April 2013). Indian Ink. Faber & Faber. pp.6–. ISBN 978-0-571-30081-5 . Retrieved 14 April 2019. Swan Song is magnificent. For all the swagger and swish and intrigue, it is consistently well supported with perfect, juicy sentences. Utter corker" -- Fiona Melrose A] seductive spellbinding debut... Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege" * S Magazine, Sunday Express * There’s also just no need for it to be so long. The book is stuffed with tangents that offer no depth or development, other than to repeatedly show us how vain, shallow, cruel, and catty most of these people are. Yes, the women’s obsession with image and reputation is almost certainly down to harsh societal pressures, but I didn’t find any of them sympathetic or compelling enough to care. And whilst the shared narrative voice did indeed throw up lots of potential, it ultimately resulted in a blending together of the women. They all descended into an exhausting mass of white privilege, from which individuals were hard to discern.

Tom manages a theatre in Somerset under threat of closure, prompting locals to rally round to try and save it.

I have to admit that prior to reading Swan Song, I knew almost nothing about Truman Capote; I had, of course, heard of his two most famous books, his much-loved novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and his non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. And thus it was that for me, Swan Song was not only a riveting read, but it too was an informative insight into one of the twentieth century’s most renowned literary darlings. She was renowned as an award-winning novelist, poet and children’s author, as well as short story writer, and this posthumous collection of tales offers another reminder of what a great writer we have lost. A rich, sharp, sting of a book. It made me laugh and grimace and pity monsters. I'm still smiling about it Stu Turton, bestselling author of THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLEA sparkling debut vividly captures the high society women who punished Capote for his indiscreet reporting" * The Guardian * Starting out in life, Capote had more than his fair share of loss and trauma – in essence he was abandoned by his mother who went on to re-invent herself in New York. His childhood companion, however, was none other than Nelle Harper Lee (yes, the novelist). He, too, was busy writing as a child, and there was already an inkling of the future, when a local paper published Mr Busybody, his portrayal of some those in his circle. It was prescient, shall we say.

The writer became hugely famous after the publication of In Cold Blood in 1966, about the murder of a Kansas family in their home. This is a world of celebrity, of rich and privileged people who live superficial, meaningless, empty and sad lives. And it is not a world that I enjoyed spending any time in. It also seems to describe a very old story.

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The real skill of Swan Song is the kaleidoscopic portrait it paints of its raddled hero. The narrative moves through time from Capote’s tawdry childhood and friendship with Harper Lee to his withered end in Fu Manchu pyjamas. This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote – even at his best – would have been proud. Shed skin of a missing corpse"? Add that to someone who "resumed his ingestion" rather than carrying on eating, or someone else who "removes the offending appendage" instead of taking someone’s arm away from around a woman’s waist, and you perhaps get the idea of what I found too much. I don’t know - maybe you like those bits. Greenberg-Jephcott brilliantly captures those occasions, how Capote’s charm sprinkled everything with “magic dust”, how they’d be “wrapped in the cocoon of conversation, doubled with laughter at his witticisms”. Until, fatally, he overstepped the mark and revealed in print what they confided in private. I was fascinated by this book. Surely Truman should have known what would happen when he broke his friends trust writing this book. He thought he was so loved by his friends that eventually he would be forgiven, but this was the start of a slippery slope for Truman sadly drinking and taking drugs to fill the empty void that losing his friends had created. This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote would have been proud" -- Alex Preston * The Observer *

Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely. Before the session, Kelleigh asked attendees to send in examples of evocative fiction. Here’s what the group came up with: It also cleverly acts on a metafictional level as a compilation of Capote’s different literary output. The narrative form matching his early short story focus and the content a mix of his novels: the early-year autobiographical aspects of “Other Voices, Other Rooms”; the socialite world of “Breakfast In Tiffany’s”; the nonfiction novel aspects of “In Cold Blood”, as well as, of course, the content and style of “Answered Prayers”.

Summary

Truman has a difficult childhood that he manages to leave behind when he becomes famous and surrounds himself with beautiful women who he calls “ his swans” Everybody loves Truman who loves to gossip about people and is always making them laugh. They feel comfortable around him sharing their own secrets over copious amounts of alcohol. The strength of this book for me was hands-down the narrative choice to tell the story from a we-perspective, reminiscent of Greek choruses. As such she creates a cacophony of voices and competing narrative strands that I enjoyed. Listening to the audiobook worked really well for this facet of the story. I found some of these stories, especially Slim’s and Babe’s, compelling and interesting to follow – but there were some women I just could not tell apart; they blended together in a picture of overwhelming privilege. I think Greenberg-Jephcott set out to make these women sympathetic victims of Capote’s scheming – but for this to work they have to be just that: sympathetic. But it is difficult to feel for people whose whole lives seem to revolve around gossip (who wore the wrong dress to whose party on a yacht is also not particularly interesting gossip).