Reviews with content warning for Racism - Breakfast at Tiffany's

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

72 reviews

c_dmckinney's review against another edition

lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Technically the book is well written and Michael C Hall's narration is perfect for the nameless narrator. I just hated the story the whole way through.

Holly Golightly is something like a proto-Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl. She's flighty and traumatized and profoundly unwell and all the men in her life are obsessed with her and using her for various purposes all their own. I have a lot of pity and empathy for her and a lot of frustration and what is probably disdain for most of the men in her life.

I definitely understand that a major issue I have with this is that I am a woman in the year 2024 with a history of trauma of my own and a background in mental healthcare education and I am unable to fully remove my context from this story from 1958.

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mysimas's review against another edition

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Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

1.5

How are people tagging this as light-hearted is beyond me, this is a story of a sad little girl - runaway child bride who'd slept with people, or should I say had been sexually taken advantage of, even before she married at 14 - who's all alone in the world and goes through all kinds of bad things in the present-time plotline of the book, including

miscarriage, numerous unwanted sexual advances, abandonment, the death of her beloved brother, a (probably accidental) entanglement with mafia and her subsequent interrogation, and more

... Light-hearted, where??

Also, for the most part, it was just boring. Yet another bleh manic pixie dream girl fantasy. I did perk up at the

mafia twist

, but by then the story was over. :(

Last but not least, heads up for a lot of racism and for some reason hate against lesbians (???).

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lazyliterature's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

honestly such a bore except for 2 of the short stories

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henrygravesprince's review against another edition

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lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Truman was an incredible writer, and I think overall the prose here is as masterful as his tends to be, but it’s worth noting that this book has a lot of depictions of people having deeply entrenched biases and using very derogatory language. Personally, I find the “historical accuracy”/“it’s of its times” argument complicated at best when it is employed: to be clear, I’m willing to approach a work where it’s at, but if I think the bigoted sentiments being depicted are being endorsed within the narrative or by the author, the time and place in which it was written doesn’t make a difference in my judgment of something. Ultimately, I don’t think Capote was agreeing with the characters in this work (or in much any of his work, really), so much as showing us a lense into the world he saw around him. That being said, I still wouldn’t be able to in good conscience recommend this to people as an “entertainment” read, especially without huge caveats for period-typical language and depictions of various kinds of bigotry.

Something I find interesting about Holly Golightly in the book, as opposed to the film, is that she is far more overtly flawed and ergo more human—I know a lot of people say she’s the manic pixie dream girl prototype, but to me, the film embodies that much more than the book. The book contains fragments of that, for sure, but it feels more like a story about people perceiving someone in that way than a story pushing the concept; Holly’s presence is ephemeral, fleeting, but also incredibly sharp and sometimes callous, and in her, I can’t help but see Nina Capote (or Lillie Mae Faulk), Truman’s mother. I think that in itself is a big part of why she’s seen in such a glittering way despite being a relatively bad friend and person, not to mention the animosity broiling beneath the narrator’s surface towards her just as much as his affection for her. Glamorous, hell-bent on becoming part of a particular upper echelon of society, and ultimately, as cruel beneath the surface as they are enthralling: these words describe Holly, Truman, and Nina each in their own right.

At its core, this is a story of home, of belonging, of identity, and of the search for that: but central to that, too, is both hopefulness and uncertainty. The characters are play, obviously save for the cat, are generally not very likeable. The facts about Holly Golightly are on unstable ground, and how accurate the narrator’s interpretation of her is, as well; as for the narrator, his identity in the story is built up entirely around his connection to Holly, and despite us knowing his life extends beyond her, he does not share it with us. Their characters are reflected in the cat, who ultimately may have found a name of his own, but as he doesn’t belong to Holly or to the narrator in the end, we never learn it; he is ultimately both a symbol of freedom and of belonging, and in the end, it seems he may be the only one who has settled into a home. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a dreamlike snapshot of New York café society from its fringes, transient and grimy, longing for home and leaving us wondering if the narrator or the central heroine ever found it.

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biancala's review against another edition

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lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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mac168's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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mandybkim's review against another edition

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sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I still don’t understand the hype around the book or movie. It okay at best

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andersonstovall's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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rachel_here's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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emileeandherbooks's review against another edition

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4.25

This book is so well-written!!! Fascinating, messy, a little nutty and a bit sad country girl turned-NYC-socialite-icon, who is still a bit sad. Rapid-fire dialogue that’s so witty, so beautiful, so funny all at once. The descriptions are so vivid, I seriously could’ve underlined a million trillion things.

I think Holiday Golightly is the blueprint for characters like Margo (Paper Towns), Summer (500 Days of Summer), and all the other Manic Pixie Dreamgirls. But out of all of them thus far, Holly G. Is my favorite 💎

“It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.”

⚠️ This book has offensive racial slurs and lesbophobia! Always disappointing and wrong, even if it is history.

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