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"Truman Capote is the most perfect writer of my generation."
-NORMAN MAILER
-NORMAN MAILER
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When Joel Knox's mother dies, he is sent into the exotic unknown of the Deep South to live with a father he has never seen. But once he gets there, everyone is curiously evasive when Joel asks to see his father. Truman Capote's first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a brilliant, searching study of homosexuality set in a shimmering landscape of heat, mystery and decadence.
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Now a traveller must make his way to Noon City by the best means he can, for there are no buses or trains heading in that direction, though six days a week a truck from the Chuberry Turpentine Company collects mail and supplies in the next-door town of Paradise Chapel: occasionally a person bound for Noon City can catch a ride with the driver of the truck, Sam Radclif. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Now a traveller must make his way to Noon City by the best means he can, for there are no buses or trains heading in that direction, though six days a week a truck from the Chuberry Turpentine Company collects mail and supplies in the next-door town of Paradise Chapel: occasionally a person bound for Noon City can catch a ride with the driver of the truck, Sam Radclif. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is Capote's debut novel and tells the story of Joel Knox, a thirteen-year-old boy sent to live with his estranged father in Alabama following the death of his mother. What he discovers there is a dilapidated mansion, his prim step-mother Amy, his witty and somewhat debauched cousin Randolph, and the mysterious absence of his father. Over the course of the novel Joel's transition from boyhood to adolescence and all the self-discovery that entails is traced with a deft, subtle pen.
This is a short novel at less than two-hundred pages, but each page is brimming with richly poetic language that brilliantly evokes the Gothic splendour of the Deep South. Characters and landscapes are conjured into life with powerful immediacy. Capote's words shimmer on the page, and I soon found myself hearing what I read in a luxuriant southern American drawl. This is a novel to be savoured for its ambitious, exuberant language, and it flows over the imagination like thick rounded syrup.
Read this, and immerse yourself in the mystical world of America's Deep South...
This is a short novel at less than two-hundred pages, but each page is brimming with richly poetic language that brilliantly evokes the Gothic splendour of the Deep South. Characters and landscapes are conjured into life with powerful immediacy. Capote's words shimmer on the page, and I soon found myself hearing what I read in a luxuriant southern American drawl. This is a novel to be savoured for its ambitious, exuberant language, and it flows over the imagination like thick rounded syrup.
Read this, and immerse yourself in the mystical world of America's Deep South...
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am not a big fan of Truman Capote as a person, just as today Stephen Fry annoys the hell out of me; BUT they both can write and have a style that is interesting and holds your attention. This tale is obviously based muchly on Capotes early life, or what he might want us to believe although it wasnt until much later in his life that he addimtted this. It is intruiging, clever, full of characters all of whom are memorable and does make me want to read some of his other titles. It doesn't make me appreciate the man himself anymore, but that is a personal reflection.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Following the death of his mother, thirteen year old Joel Knox travels to Alabama to live with his estranged father in a large, remote and decaying house where also live his step mother and cousin Randolph. He has never meet his father, and it seems upon arrival that he is not likely to meet him soon either, but that is just one of the many mysteries that will trouble young Joel, who is fast beginning to think is move South is at best a disaster, and at worst a betrayal.
But he finds friends in the form of a neighbour the rough and ready young tomboy Idabel, in Zoo the black help, and a black hermit who works charms. But he is also drawn to homosexual cousin Randolph; and his somewhat girlish good looks enamour him to most of those he meets.
Other Voices, Other Rooms is a beautiful story, as much from the way it is told as its content, rich in remarkable and imaginative metaphors that create a steamy atmosphere of the hot South; subtle in its depiction of the coming Joel's awareness of homosexuality; and full of insight - it is a most moving and captivating read, all the more remarkable considering the young age of its author, his first book.
This Penguin Classics 2004 edition contains an interesting introduction by John Berendt which adds much to our understanding of the novel, not least of which is its autobiographical content.
But he finds friends in the form of a neighbour the rough and ready young tomboy Idabel, in Zoo the black help, and a black hermit who works charms. But he is also drawn to homosexual cousin Randolph; and his somewhat girlish good looks enamour him to most of those he meets.
Other Voices, Other Rooms is a beautiful story, as much from the way it is told as its content, rich in remarkable and imaginative metaphors that create a steamy atmosphere of the hot South; subtle in its depiction of the coming Joel's awareness of homosexuality; and full of insight - it is a most moving and captivating read, all the more remarkable considering the young age of its author, his first book.
This Penguin Classics 2004 edition contains an interesting introduction by John Berendt which adds much to our understanding of the novel, not least of which is its autobiographical content.
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