Swan Song: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019

Product Information

This book is narrated by The Swans whose Song forms the novel's title - a collective chorus of Truman's circle of admirers, resentful of becoming characters in his writing: The Swans in the novel are I think based on real-life characters, but exactly who I didn't get. As another character says:

The people who work in the theatre are a motley crew of individuals – essentially good people in need of a lifeline from their troubled lives, and the theatre provides it. 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. Irony heaps on irony: Capote’s most famous book In Cold Blood, published in 1966, is also a fictionalised reportage of real events, shaped into a novel, itself a narrative of a seemingly psychopathic, absolutely cold-blooded murder in 1959 of the four members – mother, father, two children – of a Kansas farming family. With his friend Harper Lee, Capote spent years meeting investigators, the community and the murderers themselves. He saw the trajectory of the crime through to the end, witnessing the execution by hanging of the two convicted murderers, which traumatised him thereafter. As time went on, people started to say that they wanted to see Capote in the novel. Kelleigh went home, didn’t write for a week, and the day she had to submit for the next workshop she wrote a chapter about Truman as a child.

Doormat Navigation

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.

Publisher rationale: “ Friend Request is one of the most outstanding, compelling and emotionally resonant psychological thrillers I’ve read.” The Children’s Fantasy Debut: Orphans of the Tideby Struan Murray The author writes a historical piece of fiction based on the life of Truman Capote, writer of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. It is a blend of fact and fiction, and echoes the style and concept of In Cold Blood. Capote had a difficult childhood that he deeply resented, only to leave it far behind as he comes to gain entry to the circles of the powerful, wealthy and famous, admitted to their close inner circles, privy to their deepest secrets. The author drops a litany of famous names and families from the era, outlining their glamorous lives in numerous global locations. Capote collected a bevy of privileged women who adore him, indulging in the latest gossip, whilst deploying a cutting wit. They are his Swans, indulged and indulgent, relationships built up over decades, sources of artistic inspiration and influence. So why would he throw it all away by betraying them in the planned Answered Prayers, a literary gossip read, covered in Esquire magazine, exposing their secrets for all to gawp over and feed on? A vastly different vision of the male teenage clique, this is a dystopian nightmare of young men linked by brutality. Alex and his gang of “droogs” imbibe drug-laced “Knifey Moloko”, preparing for a night of sociopathic violence. They rob, rape and kill in a series of horrific crimes. There’s a hierarchy within the group, which gives way to tensions, in-fighting and challenges for dominance. Alex is betrayed, leading to his incarceration and “aversion therapy”. The clique is defined by callous detachment, desire for power and violence-as-pornography. It raises chilling questions about gang mentality and free will.As my opening quote implies that immediately gave me no common ground to start from, until I realised I I had one thing - I knew the famous poster of a film for which it turns out Capote wrote the originating novella. I read this book (and persisted with it when I might otherwise long since have abandoned it) due to its longlisting for the 2019 Women’s Prize.

Author: Kent-based freelance conference producer Laura Marshall is a recent graduate of Curtis Brown Creative three month writing course. Friend Request was the runner up for The Bath Novel Award 2016and was also shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016.A whirlwind of a first novel. There is great pathos in the Swans' woundings and in their inevitable decline. And the character of Truman himself shimmers through the novel in a wonderful blaze of eccentricity and excess. Outstanding." -- Rose Tremain Capote was their improbable confidant, the vertically challenged, blond, dirt poor gay boy-man up from Alabama to New York, with a captivating self-invented persona, bolstered by the great talent which made him a wildly successful writer. Hart, Christopher (20 January 2008). "Love hurts – but why does it feel so good?". The Sunday Times. p.18 . Retrieved 20 April 2019. Tom manages a theatre in Somerset under threat of closure, prompting locals to rally round to try and save it. This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote would have been proud Alex Preston, The Observer