This is one of few books that I have given up on after a couple of chapters. Perhaps it would have improved, but I found the writing style convoluted and the subject matter not interesting enough to struggle with.

Unfortunately I found this book very difficult to get into and was unable to finish it. I found the italicized comments from "the swans" very irritating and some of the writing very long winded. I was unfamiliar with many of the women Capote was betraying in his article, and, in many other books, this would have piqued my interest and spurred me into researching them, but sadly this was not the case with this one.

Interesting read. A fictional account of the true story of Truman Capote, his female friends (the swans), and their reaction when an excerpt of a book he is writing is published in a magazine. Capote is known for writing about those he cultivated and was close to, and this book brings the fallout of his actions to life. Pulling no punches, he betrays the secrets of those closest to him. I didn’t love this book. It was interesting and has made me research Capote further, but I felt it was longer than it needed to be and I started to lose interest. It did bring Capote to life, with excellent descriptions of him and his swans, but many of the stars were not people I have really heard of. Much of the scandal he exposed was not of great interest to me.

"Oh Truheart. You little motherfucker. What have you done?! That’s before she reads the worst of it … When she gets to the bloodstained sheets, she fumbles for the phone. Babe answers on the first ring. ‘Well?’ ‘I feel like I just got punched in the gut.’ ‘Yes, but what did you think …?’ ‘Pure garbage. Bitchy, catty trash,’ Slim says unequivocally. She tries to sound dismissive, but they know that it is bigger than that. It’s a declaration of war."

Truman Capote after 20 years of infusing himself into the fabric of the rich, powerful and famous families, exposes their devastating inner secrets. In 2 issues of Esquire magazine's serialisation of his new book ‘Answered Prayers’, he drops the biggest social bomb on his and their lives. As the author of classics such as ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and ‘In Cold Blood’ he appeared a literary genius, eccentric, yet fashionably popular during the 1960s. Even though his literary career was fading he still managed a lifestyle that his childhood could never have imagined.

Truman considered himself to have had an unloved and harsh childhood which he used to entice others into revealing their hidden skeletons. Mixed with his engaging and enthralling language entrapped many people particularly the wives, whom he called his Swans, into believing he was their confidante. With wine and words, he seduced them into confessing all.

While the subject matter of Swan Song is very intriguing and captivating, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott delivers a tremendous story depicting the background of a literary icon and an account of his thinking around the sensation that was to cost him so much. Having watched a few latter chat-show videos of Truman, he does seem quite disturbed and irrational, and claims they were always aware of the potential to appear in his books. While fictitious names are used in Capote’s book, the readers were left in no doubt who the real characters were. For some, it resulted in suicide, for which he would never be forgiven.

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did, but the fact that it is based on real events made it all the more fascinating. I was entertained the whole way through and mesmerised by the lifestyle, the secrets and gobsmacked by the professional and social suicide committed by Truman Capote. What really drove him to do it?

”He seduced us [them] all with his words – and Truman knows full well the power of words. They’re both armour and weapon, the one thing he’s sure of. They alone have never failed him, their lyricism hinting at the beauty trapped within his stunted body, not to mention his conflicted soul.”

Many thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone Publishing and NetGalley, for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.

This is part a fictional biography and part the biography of a work, in progress for over twenty years; “Answered Prayers.” Capote befriended the rich and famous and delighted in their company and their confidences. Even as a child, Capote is shown as always watching, listening and absorbing the conversations of the adults around him. His closest childhood friend, the ‘to be famous in the future,’ Nellie Harper Lee, may have been able to warn his future Swans, after Truman inserted her mother’s vicious gossip into a short story, which caused a minor, local furore, long before “Answered Prayers,” was thought of.

“Answered Prayers,” was, basically, the betrayal of the confidences that Capote gathered during his years as, ‘confessor, confidante, consigliore,’ to the socialites, society hostesses, tycoon’s wives and other wealthy women, who became known as his ‘Swans.’ When a chapter of his, long anticipated book, was published in, ”Esquire,” magazine, his beloved confidantes reacted badly to having their secrets, and barely disguised identities, available for everyone to read; resulting in Capote’s gradual decline.

I have always admired Truman Capote, since reading, “In Cold Blood,” and found this a fascinating portrait of the man, through the eyes of the many, wealthy women he surrounded himself with. Sadly, he seemed to both need their admiration and friendship and yet to totally misjudge their reaction to his forthcoming work. The novel combines his life story alongside the reaction to his betrayal of trust and is a compelling and enjoyable read. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Swan Song is a fictionalised biography of Truman Capote which focuses on his relationship with his Swans, a group of rich and stylish high society women. They were his confidantes for decades until he betrayed them and their secrets in a roman à clef called Answered Prayers, extracts of which were published during his lifetime, but which remained unfinished at the time of his death. The source material, from an age when celebrity was still distant and untouchable, is certainly fascinating, the novel feels intimately researched and the characters live and breathe on the page. It did take me a little while to adjust to the way the narrative voices shift around, but it’s a beautifully written and absorbing reimagining. However, although I enjoyed it as I read it, having thought about it afterwards I’m not sure there is actually that much going on beneath the surface. I really wanted to like it more, but ultimately I feel Swan Song is an accomplished and dazzling but in the end empty novel.

The iconic American author, Truman Capote is remembered best for penning such literary classics as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood – the latter often held to be a watershed in popular culture. He had a flair for self publicity and, throughout the 1960s, was often photographed hobnobbing with the rich and famous in fashionable nightspots. Even as his writing career declined in the following decade, he maintained his celebrity by impishly declaring his brilliance on TV chat shows.

Nobody ever doubted Capote was a gifted and original writer, but he was many other things besides, such as a charming raconteur with a knack for befriending wealthy couples. The glamorous wives in particular, whom he liked to call his Swans, often confided in him, revealing their most intimate secrets. Less easily discernible was the other side to his nature; the bitter, insecure child from Monroeville, Alabama, who believed his mother never loved him. He concealed this skilfully behind an exuberant gush of risqué anecdotes and witty conversation, rising from errand boy at The New Yorker in 1943 to internationally acclaimed novelist, short story writer and dramatist by the late 1950s.

Truman could best be epitomized by the four Cs (those who knew him most intimately would likely add a fifth): camp, catty, course and clever. Though his cleverness notoriously deserted him when he imprudently and very publicly besmirched the reputations of those he had come to rely on so completely as sources of inspiration, influence and adoration. His greatest mistake was betraying their trust by publishing in Esquire two episodes from his uncompleted novel, Answered Prayers, in which many old friends were revealed in all their grotesque prodigality, barely disguised with fictitious names.

Swan Song is a deft, dazzling, diligently researched creation, in which the lives of various members of elite, powerful, old-moneyed families, such as the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bouviers and Churchills, are verbally dissected over Martini-drenched lunches. Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott spent ten years researching this novel, which was named winner of the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel, in addition to being shortlisted for the 2015 Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition and the 2015/16 Historical Novel Society New Novel Award. I hope we won’t have to wait so long for her next book.

Many, I am sure, will be captivated by Greenberg-Jephcott’s brilliantly told story, but sadly I struggled to finish it because I simply couldn’t connect with her self-obsessed characters on any level. I found it all but impossible to summon compassion for such a malicious circle of pampered airheads, whose every preposterous, greedy whim was assuaged without scruple, however amusingly or vulnerably presented. They were the Manhattan elite, in their element muckraking over ‘friend’s’ intimate relationships. Truman was in many ways a monster, but he was encouraged in his monstrousness by those who eventually turned on him for publicly exposing their sordid, shallow lives.

Capote died of acute liver failure following a drug overdose at the age of 59 in 1984. He was never forgiven.

In November 1965, "La Cote Basque", a chapter from Truman Capote's work-in-progress, Answered Prayers - The Unfinished Novel, was published in Esquire magazine. It was a thinly veiled and very unflattering expose of the lives of Truman's circle of society friends. It's publication led to those friends deserting Truman and, in turn, to his gradual decline until he eventually died in 1984.

Swan Song is the fictionalised re-imagining of the story of that publication and subsequent decline, adopting a similar approach to the one Capote pioneered in his "nonfiction novel", In Cold Blood.

There is much of interest here. Capote was a fascinating, damaged character. There are points in the story where you can pause and switch to YouTube to watch events being referred to (I would very much recommend watching the infamous interview on the Stanley Siegel show where Capote turned up high and rambled - it gives an insight into the state of his life and mind at that point in the story - if you have been reading this book prior to watching that clip, it is heartbreaking).

https://youtu.be/dh2oWjC-hX0

But somehow, the book as a whole did not work for me. I think there are three reasons for this, and I would be the first to acknowledge that what are weaknesses for me will be strengths to others (it won the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel, so clearly some people found it praiseworthy).

Firstly, all the people are shallow, self-centred and vindictive, with Capote being the worst of them. I realise there is little an author can do if their chosen subjects are not nice people, so this is not a criticism of the book, but more an explanation of my reaction to it.

Secondly, large parts of the book are written in the first person plural by the "swans" of the title, the women whom Capote gathered around him and who told him the secrets that he exposed in Esquire magazine. To me, this felt odd, like some kind of Greek chorus roaming round the book en masse.

Finally, I have to acknowledge that I found much of the book over-written. I don’t want to go overboard about this as it is about personal taste, but consider the following quote

"Waited until she'd wandered numbly down the hall, shedding the black pantsuit, leaving it lifeless on the carpet like the shed skin of a missing corpse"

"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.

My thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for an ARC of this book in advance of publication in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, my honest review is that I felt somewhat let down.

If the mark of a good book inspires the reader to find out more about the subject then this was a very good book. I had heard of Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at Tiffanys but none of his other works, I even recall seeing him in old film clips but knew nothing about him. This work , although fiction gave a flavour of the man and the times. His upbringing would make any human being damaged , and the only saving grace was his obvious intellect and mastery in weaving stories. He was adopted by the rich and famous in society as one of their own, who feted and indulged him almost as one of their playthings, which he enjoyed lavishly. Until , like IIcarus he thought he could not burn. Was it a flaw in his personality that made him turn on his friends? Did he so believe in his celebrity that he could use their stories so maliciously without consequence. Or was it in his personality to damage relationships when they became too close? The excesses, the parties the wealth were beautifully described as was the lives and conditions of those who did not inhabit this rarefied society. I hope everyone who reads it enjoys and gets as much from this book as I did.

Swan Song is a name dropping, romantic adoration, drug taking, cocktail sipping culmination of a book, detailing the life of Truman Capote and his 'swans'. It's an explicit look at celebrity, and the women who want to be, and are part of that higher class of people. Gossipy in places, with perhaps a need to be refined, but overall an interesting book to read.

Swan Song
Truman Capote is Southern ‘white trash' made good. He has elevated himself into high society by both being a fine writer and the archetypal gay best friend. Truman has dubbed his circle of ladies his Swans. They have elegance, class and millions of dollars. Life is a non-stop social whirl of parties, foreign travel, bed-hopping and gossip, and Truman is the master of gossip. Fuelled by endless cocktails, and wreathed in cigarette smoke, the Swans have laid themselves bare to Truman Capote and his poison pen.
Swan Song is an excellent homage to that time. All of the Swans, Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness and the rest are very glamorous, and you get to be a fly on the wall in their fabulous lives. Truman perhaps does not realise that he isn't one of them, that he is a privileged ‘hanger-on'. Or perhaps he has always known, and has been destined to betray them in print, and be cast out of Eden. Like the Frog and the Scorpion, he is destined to sting, and they should have known better.
Truman Capote’s masterwork is Answered Prayers. The very worst of his friends’ secrets are laid bare in Esquire magazine, thinly veiled and twisted, but obvious to all. Society closes ranks on Truman, and he is sent to Coventry. He believes the punishment for talking out of school does not fit the crime, but there is no going back for either side. No one can back down and say sorry.
Ultimately Swan Song is rather sad. Truman gradually drinks and drugs himself to death, still hoping against hope for reconciliation. He just couldn't help himself. Regardless, it was obviously really great while it lasted. The Kindle edition does not contain any pictures, but the reader can dream of being on Gianni Agnelli's yacht, watching the sun set with an Orange Drink in hand.

Frenetically fast-paced, this is what Capote himself would probably have termed 'fictional non-fiction': part oblique biography, part history of the birth of Capote's book 'Answered Prayers', part evocation of historical moments which fed our modern obsession with celebrity. The pages are filled with iconic names: Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill ('Radzilla'), Gore Vidal, Mick Jagger, Cecil Beaton, Paul Bowles - but in lots of ways they are functions of their names and statuses rather than characters as such.

At the heart of the book is the symbiotic relationship between Capote and the wealthy women who shared their gossip with him - only to find themselves exposed in his 'Answered Prayers'. That's kind of it, really. Some of the gossip is cuttingly amusing (but it's readily available via Google and Wiki), and Capote himself is a high-wire act of energetic self-creation and self-annihilation. While secrets are betrayed, they're also the source of celebrity and fame - ultimately a book which is easy to read at a breakneck pace.