Book Review: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name
Holly Golightly. A name as iconic as the jewellery house she is associated with: Tiffany & co. She’s a delight, a tease, an enigma, a heartbreaker. You just can’t help but fall for her charms. She’s a damned fool, but one that leaves a trail of heartbroken destruction behind her. And yet, you’ll find yourself begging for more. She doesn’t belong to anyone or anything, not even Cat.
For all time, everyone will associate the enigmatic Holly Golightly with Audrey Hepburn’s turn that saw her nominated for an Oscar. All others are beyond compare and irrevocably compared to her. Yet, let’s looks at the real Holly, the one scribbled down in Truman Capote’s novella, as Holly herself says she is ‘top banana in the shock department’. Does anyone know anything about her? Sure, okay she wears dark glasses, has a Cat, whom she loves but doesn’t feel like she owns him. Apparently, she was married when she was 14 and she’s pretty sure that wasn’t legal (pretty sure it was in the state of Texas in 1956). Oh, and she hates snoops. And cages. Especially cages. Anything and everything about her is hard to figure out, you just can’t quite grasp her. And that’s the point. Our narrator, whom we don’t know the name of, but Holly calls him Fred, can’t seems to see past the big eyes and mess of tawny hair: her youth, her tenacity, her impulsiveness, and charm. All you’re supposed to see is the beauty; the shallow surface of the ocean called Holly Golightly.
But look a little closer, let’s have a look at those ‘cages’ she hates because not everything is as it seems: She was a child bride, which is wrong on so many counts, and, according to her ex(?) husband Doc she ran away from home. Why? Well according to Holly when it comes to sex and partners ‘I don’t count anything before 11’ which is probably more horrifying the more you ruminate on it. But its glazed over when she recounts how kind Doc was and the gall, the laughter, the sheer ridiculousness of all the rats (men) in New York. Even when she first meets our narrator, she has a bite mark on her neck from the drunken man she went out with.
I’m reticent to say this, but there is a touch of the ‘Lorelai Lee’ about her, but without the happy ending. Holly loses a child, gets arrested and unceremoniously dumped by her Latin lover whom she claims to love. In her anger and pain, she dumps Cat in an alley way, ready to run away from all her troubles to Brazil. But, unlike the film, Cat cannot be found; learning too late that things, people, places, and pets do belong to you. No one is an island.
In case you’re worried, Cat is eventually found by our narrator. He’s happy sitting in a beautiful window gazing down at the hustle and bustle of Manhattans streets. Holly? She’s gone, as with the wind. Truman Capote, I take my hat off to you. This novella is a masterclass on the tragic, beautiful, unattainable heroine. Maybe it’s a little dated? And a little clichéd when you think about how men used to write women. Holly hates cages, yet the narrator can’t help but put her in one – and I’m not talking about her ‘mean reds’. I’m talking about that inertia of stylish mystery wrapped up in a Tiffany bow and dark sunglasses: Holly Golightly.