TBH this was far from my cup of tea and I feel like I am being generous in giving it two stars although I can see plenty of positive reviews. The Swans of the title are Truman capote's coterie of rich and powerful women. Truman's swan song shows him breaking the trust they placed in him to keep their secrets in a truly horrific way. My problem is that i felt the writing was fractured, I particularly hated the "plurality" of the voices of Truman's Swans, and i never felt that the author really brought together all the threads in the story line. The characters were not described in a way that made me drawn to any of them which really didn't help. I understand that the author is trying to reflect the style of Capote in the writing but for me it simply does not work.

Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott (Penguin), £12.99, is utterly divine. It’s an extraordinary book that swept me up and I just couldn’t put it down, despite it being set around a man and a subject I know remarkably little about. For Swan Song is a fictionalised reimagining of Truman Capote’s fall from grace from New York’s high society after the publication of the salacious ‘La Cote Basque 1965’ from his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers.

The plot itself is titillating, of course – the gossipy mercurial Truman Capote exposing the secrets of those who called friends, and those whose favour he depended on to fulfill the decadent lifestyle he craved, in a thinly veiled fictional account leads to such a backlash that it plunges him into a deep depression. But it is the writing in this debut novel that astounds most of all. It is vivid, addictive and whips up a terrific portrait of a deeply contradictory and complex man, contrasting scenes from his unorthodox childhood with those from the gilded bubble he ended up in that he lanced through his own actions.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, and the author Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott.
I enjoyed this book, and it was interesting to learn more about the author behind 'In Cold Blood' and 'Breakfast at Tiffanys', a person I knew very little about previously.
However, the book was far too long for what is essentially a catalogue of one bitter man's grievances and the betrayal of his closest friends and confidantes.
It is very well written, diligently researched, and the author paints vivid scenes and settings, but that cannot detract from the fact that it is simply a chronicle of dressed up gossip.
If you have a particular interest in Capote and his oeuvre, or in that period of US high society, then I would recommend this book. Otherwise, I think it can be missed.

I absolutely hate to give up on a book but I simply could not get along with Swan Song and DNF'd it at 50%.

You see, Swan Song isn’t an objectively bad book. It’s coherent, the plot moves along nicely, the grammar and spelling is fine, there’s no major storyline inconsistencies or majorly annoying characters. It has some good points; it’s glamorous, it features a number of well written characters, it feels authentic. The problem is…I simply don’t care what happens.

Honestly, I’ve never felt so emotionally distanced from a book. I have absolutely no idea why – it’s not like the characters aren’t multi-faceted or deserving of pity or the writing is terrible. It’s just that…I don’t care. You see, Swan Song is the story of Truman Capote (yes, that one) and the publication of excerpts from his unfinished novel”Answered Prayers”. Capote’s writing features all of his glamorous Hollywood/High Society friends and his bitchy stories about them and Swan Song is the imagined reaction to the release of such scandalous gossip. My problem is this: I don’t care about (fairly tame) gossip about 1950’s starlets. I don’t care about whose husband had an affair with whom. I don’t care who felt betrayed and who spat out their dry martini all over their Chanel evening gown. It just wasn’t for me.

I really really enjoyed this book! I loved the glamour, intrigue, and betrayal, as well as the descriptions of the filthy rich lifestyles these 'swans' lived. The book was written really, really well, and I personally really enjoyed the time jumping format as well as the descriptions and accounts of Capote's childhood, and how he altered his stories to fit each woman. He was shown as manipulative and calculating, but also as vulnerable, and in need of love. All in all, I thought this was a really enjoyable book and I loved the sheer wealth depicted, as well as the scandalous back stories and shocks of the women that lived in such a world.

I enjoyed this very much to start with, a fascinating insight into the mind of Truman Capote and the circle he socialized with - like the Great Gatsby for real. But after a while I became rather bored with it all and stopped reading..

Everyone has heard of Truman Capote and everyone has heard of his fall from grace. Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott turns an examination of his life and the choices that he made into a non-fiction novel that I can imagine that Capote himself would have enjoyed. It is honest and a little biting, evoking a time in old Hollywood that most of us can only dream of.

Am interesting insight into the life of Truman Capote and his era, well written and original. A very impressive debut.

Devotees only I think - Capote isn’t the most pleasant and yet neither are his books so there’s no real pretend - strangely there’s so much prentiousness that it gets tiresome and in the end I really could not have cared less who was having an affair with who

If you are interested in the period and have a particular interest in Capote I’m sure you will appreciate it

This really is the most delicious reimagining of a time when Truman Capote and his 'Swans' glided through New York City. I hung on every word.

Recently, there’s been a slew of debuts so confidently executed (‘Conversations with Friends,’ ‘Tangerine,’‘Promising Young Women’) that the reader has to remind themselves that this is the work of a new author. ‘Swan Song’ is no exception.

This skilful novel may be fiction, but it’s executed so assuredly that the reader feels like they’re privy to a real life expose. Greenberg-Jephcott’s meticulous research shines through; it’s hard to criticise the realism with which the voices of Capote and his acolytes are brought to life.

Capote enthusiasts may well find ‘Swan Song’ more rewarding than those with a passing interest, but you don’t need to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of his work to enjoy this sumptuous debut. It’s going to be interesting to see the subject matter that Greenberg-Jephcott turns her attention to next.

I've heard so much about Truman Capote’s <i>In Cold Blood</i>, a book about the murder of a Kansas family, but I've yet to track down a copy. It's his version of a true life event and by all accounts it's a masterpiece. Similarly, I've seen the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (who hasn't!) yet I've so far neglected to seek out a copy of Capote’s novella, on which it’s based. But when I was granted the opportunity to read this book, telling of the life of the man himself, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about him. The book is based on known facts about the life of this rather strange but also hugely interesting man but much of the detail (conversations and some other elements) are the imaginings of the author. These may or may not reflect what actually transpired but either way it makes the account gripping, and often hilarious.

What is known about Capote is that he was born in Louisiana, in 1924, but moved to Monroeville, Alabama at age 4. His mother was desperate to lift her station in life and Truman’s experience was one of constantly being left by her. Physically he was short and possessed an unusually high pitched voice. His sexual preferences were for males of the species. He was always a story teller and won a competition with an early composition. In due course he made his way to New York and, in time, befriended a group of women who were amongst the most stylish of their age. Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (sister of Jackie Kennedy) and others seemed to attend an endless round of parties and lunches and to regularly take trips to exotic spots – often with Truman in tow. What is also known is that in 1975, <i>Esquire</i> magazine published a chapter of a book Truman had allegedly be writing for some considerable time. Entitled ‘La Côte Basque 1965’, the piece was effectively a character assassination of some of these friends (who are thinly disguised throughout).

The fictional element in this book fills in the gaps via a fly on the wall act on some key events in Truman’s childhood and later life. But the real fun - the meat of the thing - is the reaction we witness to the <i>Esquire</i> publication. Those directly impacted respond violently – one even being rumoured to have committed suicide – whilst others fear that they too will be maligned should the book ever be published in full or if further extracts are to appear. In effect, the writer was immediately ostracised from the group and found his access to New York high society permanently barred. His closest friend, Babe, never spoke to him again, it seems. We listen to conversations that take place between members of the group and eavesdrop as Truman talks to his remaining contacts. These conversations are often bitchy, and usually very funny. As an unrepentant Capote continues to stoke the fire he also desperately tries to weasel his way back into the lives of his former friends. We also witness how his life stars to spiral downwards amid his increasing dependency on drugs and booze. This ain't gonna end well!

It's a remarkable tale and told, for the most part, in a hugely entertaining way. My only reservation surrounds the fact that it does all rattle on a little too long for my personal tastes and I think the author was a somewhat over indulgent in her description of the final stage of Truman’s life. That's said, it's certainly a book that made me laugh and also had me regularly searching out more background information on the large cast of players, so it clearly did grab me.

This magnificent book surrounds the life of Truman Capote and his ‘Swans’ – the well-bred women he collects. The narrative is fragmented – leaping back and forth in time and looking at the lives of his swans as well as that of ‘Tru’. There is a Greek chorus of sorts narrating proceedings and judging Tru’s actions against ‘them’ (the Swans). The text plays with the unreliability of Truman’s recollections – any story he tells you can never trust fully. In the novel, at best he is guilty of hyperbole, at worst of fabrication. The event that affects everything in the novel is the publication of an extract from Truman’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers in which he publicly exposes the secrets of his high society friends – betraying 20 years of friendship and committing social suicide. Truman cannot understand why his friends turn their backs on him. His life starts to disintegrate around him and the further the novel progresses the more you recognise that the fragmented state of the prose reflects the fragmented state of Truman’s mind. The book is fascinating, touching and in places funny and its structure is brilliantly sculpted.

Swan Song oozes style, glamour and wealth while also grappling with love, hatred and revenge. It's the adult real-life Gossip Girl novel of your dreams, with a full cast of famous faces from the past. It's written beautifully and I enjoyed reading more about the fascinating life of Truman Capote and his Swans once I'd finished the novel. I'll have to pick up some of his writing as I have not read Capote before, so I suppose you could say that Swan Song is the gift that keeps on giving!

A brilliant debut, I didn’t know much about Truman Capote beforehand but the level of detail and knowledge in this book is astounding. You can tell the writer has really done their research. This is the story of Truman’s close friends and acquaintances whose secrets he gave away in his writing, ultimately ostracising him. Extremely interesting and catty!

Although this is a bit of a change from my normal crime fiction reads I was intrigued by a book about Truman Capote, being the much revered author of 'In Cold Blood'. I read In Cold Blood some time ago and also 'Other Voices, Other Rooms', both without knowing anything about Capote himself, but then caught the film 'Capote' on a flight. This filled me in on some of his, let's say 'quirks' (and proved what a chameleon actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was), but didn't particularly touch on the celebrity circles in which he moved. In a similar vein to 'Mrs Hemingway' this is a fictional account of real characters, and it is completely enthralling.

The timeline jumps about a bit (I was reading a netgalley which may have made it more difficult to know when I was) but the book opens in 1975, as the first chapter of Capote's 'Answered Prayers' is published in Esquire magazine. After decades of sharing the most intimate secrets with his 'Swans' - a group of women from the highest ranks of American society - he publishes a thinly disguised story washing their dirty linen in the most public way. The Swans close ranks and Capote is shunned. While the story is the aftermath of the publication, the changes in timeline fill in some of the stories Capote has been told.


Truman Capote by Jack Mitchell
In the preceding years Capote has travelled the world with these woman and listened to their stories, in fact all of the women he surrounded himself with had stories to tell, often, like Capote himself, they were of their rise from rags to riches. But some, like Caroline Lee Radziwiłł (née Bouvier), Jaqueline Kennedy's sister, were always high up the social ladder but still captivated him.

He's also told a few stories of his own, and as with the arguments over how 'nonfiction' In Cold Blood truly was the book illustrates his manipulation of the truth (or 'truth-flexing') to suit his audience. Towards the end of the book we find out the truth behind the publication of the story that shattered his friendship with his greatest love. But this is Capote - who knows what to believe. Once we get to the final chapters and his increased reliance on drink and drugs the narrative becomes less coherent as Capote starts to see visions of the people he  wronged.

The narrative voice is unusually 'we' the voice of the swans together. They also refer to Capote as 'the boy' - which does tally with his often infantile behaviour. The writing style is unusual, it's very easy to read with lots of showing rather than telling but I assume that some aspects are echoing the type of prose which might have been associated with Capote.

As with any fictionalised account I found myself a little frustrated not knowing where the line was between truth and fiction. I also found, as much was made of the Swans' appearance, that I needed to google for photographs of them all. I even came across photographs of his infamous Black and White Ball before I reached it in the book, the ball in the book lived up to the expectations raised by the images. There are a few TV interviews which take place in the book that I would like to track down though...

This was a really fascinating book, I just have to remind myself that it's a fictionalised story! Many thanks to the publisher for the NetGalley.

I’ve always had very conflicted feelings about Truman Capote. This is the author who wrote the achingly beautiful autobiographical short story ‘A Christmas Memory’ which my cousin read to an enraptured audience every year at his annual Christmas party. And, of course, he penned the novella ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ whose whiff of glamour surrounding Holly Golightly’s tale of self-creation made the teenage me desperate to move to a city. But Capote was also the man who spat venom about countless figures I admire from my favourite author Joyce Carol Oates who he called “a joke monster who ought to be beheaded in a public auditorium” to Meryl Streep who he called “the Creep. Ooh, God, she looks like a chicken.” Many years later, Oates had the last word and proved who really succeeded and endured by tweeting on October 14th 2013: “Ironic that I am a judge for the Truman Capote award when Capote in a druggy interview said he hated me & that I should be executed. LOL.” So I’ve never made the effort to read some of Capote’s most enduring works like “In Cold Blood” and “Music for Chameleons” and certainly not his notorious unfinished novel “Answered Prayers”. But I was thrilled to better come to understand an interpretation and look at Capote’s complex, spirited and ultimately tragic life through reading Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s novel “Swan Song” about the high-society heroines Capote befriended and shockingly betrayed.

In 1975, Capote published excerpts from his unfinished novel “Answered Prayers” in Esquire which presented thinly veiled portraits of several wealthy, powerful trend-setters and their husbands. He spilled all the tea about their romantic trysts and dirty laundry. These women such as Babe Paley (a style icon), Slim Keith (a socialite credited with discovering Lauren Bacall), Gloria Guinness (a beauty rumoured to have once been a Nazi spy) and Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy’s younger sister) had confided in Capote over the years and made him a firm fixture of their elite circle. He had a charisma, wit and talent for giving people what they needed. Capote sought to immortalize their stories in literature and reveal the sordid truth about their husbands by writing his new novel which he envisioned as a 20th century version of “Remembrance of Things Past”. The women didn’t see it this way and expelled him from their group, turning him into a social outcast. Capote sought to turn these flesh and blood women who he referred to as his “swans” into characters, but Greenberg-Jephcott endeavours to give them their voices and identities back in her novel. It’s narrated from their collective perspective as they observe Capote’s downfall as well as devoting sections to their individual stories. Fascinatingly, the author also includes multiple versions of Capote’s life tailored to appeal to the different women’s personalities. It builds to a complex portrait that raises questions about the difference between fact and fiction, the boundaries between self-creation and self-delusion and the real meaning of love/friendship.

These are all themes threaded throughout Capote’s own work so it’s fascinating the way Greenberg-Jephcott posits how he grappled with these problems within his own life. It also asks what the difference is between drawing upon real life for the sake of art and the degree to which an author exploits those closest to him. Of course, decades after all the dust has settled, almost no one cares about the particulars of these women’s affairs which were once tabloid headlines. If Capote was able to capture something about universal concepts of ambition and betrayal while also describing the particulars of a bygone age of American history his writing would have lasting value. But what responsibility should he have had to respecting his friends’ privacy? And how much was he motivated to write these things as an elaborate revenge upon the high society which shunned his mother and drove her to suicide? Greenberg-Jephcott weaves ideas into her narrative about Capote’s lowly upbringing, the community and family who rejected him and his intense longing for his mother’s approval. It’s fascinating how the author shows Capote to be at once a fragile boy and a vindictive genius in one alcohol/drug-fuelled gluttonous man.

All this is such rich material that it’s almost easy to forget the admirable writing skills Greenberg-Jephcott deploys in bringing this complex story to life. The novel bursts with details about some of the most important figures of the age that these women mingled with – everyone from the Kennedys to Hollywood bigwigs to Diego Rivera to macho blowhards like Ernst Hemingway and Gore Vidal – as well as honouring the admirable accomplishments of the women themselves. There are such evocative descriptions of place from the rural landscape of Capote’s Louisiana upbringing to sun-bleached afternoons on the Italian Riviera to glitzy parties in New York City. The author captures inflections of speech from Southern drawls to society slang. It makes for vivid and mesmerising reading. I was particularly interested in the descriptions of Capote’s relationship to his childhood friend Harper Lee who mostly existed on the periphery of his life but played an important part. In a way, it seems a shame that he didn’t value and cultivate this continuous friendship over the course of his life rather than seek to gain favour with the high society he aspired to join. If he’d sought favour with his intellectual equals rather than needlessly trashing them out of what I can only suppose was jealousy he might have established more stable and enduring friendships. But his example shows how even a genius with great psychological insight can be toppled by the mechanisms of his own ego. He was also the product of a part of American culture that’s relentlessly aspirational and wealth-driven in a way that often leads to bloated excess and dissolution.

The wonderful thing is that “Swan Song” doesn’t read like a tragic tale, but a celebration of beauty and art and intimacy. There is peril, loss and a price to pay, but there’s also an infectious spirit to the many scintillating personalities the author brilliantly portrays that made me want to lean in and listen.

Swan Song is a lyrical, seductive and heartbreaking poem of a novel. Based on real life, it follows the social musings, interferings and manipulations of author Truman Capote, and the aftermath of a pivotal moment in the writer’s life when, in order to promote a new novel he was writing, he published a chapter of it in Esquire magazine. The novel, Answered Prayers, was inspired by his own social circles, and the published chapter tore those circles apart. Within it, through thinly veiled caricatures and barely disguised names, Capote revealed the secrets and confidences he had gleaned over the years of friendship with New York’s elite.

Known for surrounding himself with beautiful, wealthy and vulnerable women who he called his ‘swans’, when he shared their secrets, Capote found himself a pariah. Swan Song is told from the point of the swans, although we are never told who. The timeline hops backwards and forwards, which is confusing at first but somehow adds to the feeling that everything within the book is rushing towards a key point.

Capote is revealed as a complex and not always likeable man - self important and arrogant, yet deeply vulnerable and achingly lonely. The women - Slim, Babe, CZ, Lee and Marella, all legends in their own right - move around him in intricately woven threads. There is a feel of voyeurism to the book. The reader has to reconcile themselves with the fact that, as easy as it is to condemn Capote for his betrayal of his friends, for exposing their private lives to public scrutiny, this book actually takes that a step further, revisiting the buried hurts and exposing a few more for good measure. In the glamour of the world it is describing, it’s easy to forget that these were real people.

But the book itself is beautifully written, with haunting imagery and a feel to it that is somehow both human and ethereal. It’s compelling and thoughtful and, occasionally - like Capote - wickedly funny.

This was a delight. I was aware of Capote’s swans after viewing the film ‘Infamous’ a few years ago and was pleased to have the opportunity to read and review this fictionalised account of those relationships and how due to his hubris it all came crashing down..

The novel is rich in description and Greenberg’Jephcott weaves a narrative that places the reader in the midst of the glamourous parties, the lunches and meetings peppered with familiar names. Likewise, the unfolding tragedy is very visceral. I am curious about her research and will be looking up more information about her writing process.

A novel like his own infamous ‘Cold Blood’ that in a social sense peels away a world hidden from eyes of many and gives insight into a flawed yet great man. Highly recommended.

One way of looking at a book concerning the last magnum opus of Truman Capote's life is that the read will never be close to the power, wit, intention and achievement of the original. One other way of looking at this book, however, is that while it wants to excoriate Capote for digging up a load of socialite gossip and disguising it as fiction, these pages do get too close to doing that as well. So we get a fictional device of a 'royal we' kind of narrator, an unusual first person plural, to lambast the man for spreading the dirt. But we also get quotes from the dirt, with this author clearly wanting her cake and to eat it – and to throw it into the faces of the long dead. So several facts remain – one, that these people would be D-list celebrities these days, or pompous It Girls, and they are of no interest now and would never have been of interest to me then. Fact two, there are two very good films if you want to explore the character of Capote. Fact three, this clearly wasn't a book for me – and the length of it spreading out in front of me was far too galling to continue.