Scan barcode
addieballin's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
This is what happens when you repress white men's sexuality then let them run amok
hannah850's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.25
mchl_btt's review against another edition
5.0
Se dovessi pensare a un aggettivo per descrivere questo libro e la storia che racconta, sceglierei "disturbante".
Nel momento stesso in cui ho iniziato a leggere, conoscevo già gli avvenimenti e gli assassini, ma questo non ha reso la lettura noiosa e prevedibile, tuttaltro. Perchè al di là della - se così vogliamo chiamarla - trama, quello che rende questo romanzo magnetico è la capacita di Capote di farci vedere l'altro lato della medaglia: il punto di vista dei cattivi. E nel momento in cui inizi a vedere il mondo da quella prospettiva succede una cosa disturbante: sai benissimo che le azioni che hanno commesso i due assassini sono deprecabili e imperdonabili nella loro assurdità e immotivatezza, ma allo stesso tempo conosci il loro passato, la loro storia, quello che li ha portati fino lì. E sapere non riduce in nessun modo le loro colpe, ma di sicuro suscita nel lettore una sorta di compassione, un sentimento di pena.
Questo sentimento secondo me è reso benissimo nei pensieri di Mr Dewey alla fine della confessione di Perry, di cui riporto la citazione:
"Nondimento, gli era possibile guardare all'uomo che gli sedeva al fianco sneza rabbia - semmai con un briciolo di comprensione - dato che la vita di Perry Smith non era stata, quel che si dice, rose e fiori bensì un miserevole, agghiaciante e desolato trascorrere da un miraggio a un altro miraggio. La comprensione di Dewey, però, non era così profonda da lasciar spazio né al perdono né alla compassione"
Ho trovato lo stile di Capote magistrale, l'alternanza di reportage narrativo, parti romanzate e interviste dirette è così ben oliata che la sensazione è sempre quella di leggere un romanzo raccontato da un narratore onniscente che vuole disseminare le pagine di indizi su ciò che succederà. E questo è, di nuovo, disturbante, quando ci si rende conto della verità delle parole che si stanno leggendo.
Uno dei libri che mi ha catturato di più fino ad oggi, a cui continuavo a pensare quando non lo leggevo, di cui mi tornavano in mente immagini e riflessioni.
Disturbante, ma memorabile.
Nel momento stesso in cui ho iniziato a leggere, conoscevo già gli avvenimenti e gli assassini, ma questo non ha reso la lettura noiosa e prevedibile, tuttaltro. Perchè al di là della - se così vogliamo chiamarla - trama, quello che rende questo romanzo magnetico è la capacita di Capote di farci vedere l'altro lato della medaglia: il punto di vista dei cattivi. E nel momento in cui inizi a vedere il mondo da quella prospettiva succede una cosa disturbante: sai benissimo che le azioni che hanno commesso i due assassini sono deprecabili e imperdonabili nella loro assurdità e immotivatezza, ma allo stesso tempo conosci il loro passato, la loro storia, quello che li ha portati fino lì. E sapere non riduce in nessun modo le loro colpe, ma di sicuro suscita nel lettore una sorta di compassione, un sentimento di pena.
Questo sentimento secondo me è reso benissimo nei pensieri di Mr Dewey alla fine della confessione di Perry, di cui riporto la citazione:
"Nondimento, gli era possibile guardare all'uomo che gli sedeva al fianco sneza rabbia - semmai con un briciolo di comprensione - dato che la vita di Perry Smith non era stata, quel che si dice, rose e fiori bensì un miserevole, agghiaciante e desolato trascorrere da un miraggio a un altro miraggio. La comprensione di Dewey, però, non era così profonda da lasciar spazio né al perdono né alla compassione"
Ho trovato lo stile di Capote magistrale, l'alternanza di reportage narrativo, parti romanzate e interviste dirette è così ben oliata che la sensazione è sempre quella di leggere un romanzo raccontato da un narratore onniscente che vuole disseminare le pagine di indizi su ciò che succederà. E questo è, di nuovo, disturbante, quando ci si rende conto della verità delle parole che si stanno leggendo.
Uno dei libri che mi ha catturato di più fino ad oggi, a cui continuavo a pensare quando non lo leggevo, di cui mi tornavano in mente immagini e riflessioni.
Disturbante, ma memorabile.
terryma90's review against another edition
4.0
I had to read this for school. It was really good. It is the classic murder nonfiction and you can tell that Truman Capote put his heart and soul into writing this and giving light to the Clutters massacre.
feyley's review against another edition
4.0
Full review on my blog: https://leyreads.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/in-cold-blood-by-truman-capote/
Though you know the outcome from the beginning, there is this tension that rises from the first page. Almost as if the family will survive in this rendition. The killers will change their minds or the family will survive through miraculous means. However, neither of these things happens. For the first fifty pages or so, I was on edge waiting for the murders to occur. Then, just like that, they were over and we had skipped to the aftermath. It was such a masterful way to keep the reader on the hook.
The dual perspectives of this story also made for another fascinating element. From the beginning of the book, you know the identity of the killers and their movements as they parallel the family’s. Seeing the murders from their side as well gave it more clarity. This was not a senseless killing that happened to the Clutter family. Even before they were both out of prison, on previous charges; they had plans to murder this family and how they were going to do it. This doesn’t feel like a spoiler because the bare facts of the case are in the synopsis for the book. It’s also a fairly well-known case from the 50s-60s.
My biggest issue with In Cold Blood was the last 30 or so pages, where Capote gets into the sentences of the other inmates on death row with the Clutter family killers. While it was interesting to hear their unique situations, it made no sense to include this information in the book. It honestly felt like Capote was getting paid by the page and decided to throw these in to fluff out the end of the book. This is the place where the book lost a full star for me, I just found it a bad way to wrap up a book.
Though you know the outcome from the beginning, there is this tension that rises from the first page. Almost as if the family will survive in this rendition. The killers will change their minds or the family will survive through miraculous means. However, neither of these things happens. For the first fifty pages or so, I was on edge waiting for the murders to occur. Then, just like that, they were over and we had skipped to the aftermath. It was such a masterful way to keep the reader on the hook.
The dual perspectives of this story also made for another fascinating element. From the beginning of the book, you know the identity of the killers and their movements as they parallel the family’s. Seeing the murders from their side as well gave it more clarity. This was not a senseless killing that happened to the Clutter family. Even before they were both out of prison, on previous charges; they had plans to murder this family and how they were going to do it. This doesn’t feel like a spoiler because the bare facts of the case are in the synopsis for the book. It’s also a fairly well-known case from the 50s-60s.
My biggest issue with In Cold Blood was the last 30 or so pages, where Capote gets into the sentences of the other inmates on death row with the Clutter family killers. While it was interesting to hear their unique situations, it made no sense to include this information in the book. It honestly felt like Capote was getting paid by the page and decided to throw these in to fluff out the end of the book. This is the place where the book lost a full star for me, I just found it a bad way to wrap up a book.
marlowjules's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
sofiarguimaraes's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 ✰
For those who are interesting in seeing a very well written story in a journalist perspective, this is a great book. I was invested for more than 200, but then it was too slow for me. It's great for those who are learning how to write for investigative journalism, has a lot of detail, the writing is amazing and the storytelling was perfect. I just think that the book doesn't need the +300 pages. I have still learn a few interesting ways of writing that I'll probably apply when I start my investigative project.
For those who are interesting in seeing a very well written story in a journalist perspective, this is a great book. I was invested for more than 200, but then it was too slow for me. It's great for those who are learning how to write for investigative journalism, has a lot of detail, the writing is amazing and the storytelling was perfect. I just think that the book doesn't need the +300 pages. I have still learn a few interesting ways of writing that I'll probably apply when I start my investigative project.
dyno8426's review against another edition
4.0
Truman Capote has plotted out one of the most infamous murders in the history of Southern American criminal landscape by adopting the form and style of a fictional mystery throughout the narrative. And I especially liked it for the way it engages its readers - the descriptive element is so thorough and so well-written that I did not realise it was a true account from the period around 1960s when it happened until I noticed the referential nature of the text at many points - instances quoting real interviews and historical accounts of both the victim and criminal party involved. The author uses his imagination to remove the documentary-feeling aspects from this narrative by going "beyond the facts".
This obviously involves trying to imagine the interactions among people of which there would never be any proof whatsoever. And I appreciate the result of this attempt, the primary being studying the scarring effect this mass murder of the Clutter family created in the otherwise peaceful small farming town of Holcombe. By going "beyond the facts" in his narration, the author brings character depth and perspective of the criminals which tends to get overlooked by the immediate reactions of horror and hatred upon hearing the incident, and which naturally gets overshadowed by our emotional thirst for vengeance and simple notions of morality. The really appreciable part of the story lies in an analysis of the psyche of criminals: the extremes of feelings like insecurity and bitterness for the world around one which can make a person care less about anyone's life, and least about his/her own. The title of the story centrally captures the need to understand how isolation and rebellion are vented out through recklessness in simpler crimes; and sometimes the most chilling and horrifying crimes are unmeditated and spontaneous, seemingly "in cold blood". This historical account through such a form achieves in evoking an empathy even for cold-blooded criminals like Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickock and a cry-for-help owing to their circumstances which dented their psychological characters and led them to cross that threshold into an hateful abyss of no-return.
For the same purpose of humanising the characters, the chilly "thrill" of the real murder occupies quite a small portion of the story, but instead gives accounts of real psychological analyses that came out after this event came into light nationally and eventually, globally. It challenges the righteousness and the effective success of capital punishment and judicial system - when and how much it does/does not try to accommodate the correction in these destructive outliers of human behaviour - if human society is capable of breeding such bitterness among its individuals, then shouldn't it try to remove it by facing it instead of trying to eliminate it? Questions regarding penalising the act of taking someone's life by taking the criminal's life and higher theological, Christian notions also eventually decide the fate of the two infamous murderers in this story. Various other heinous crimes around the same time try to show the criminal sketch of those who committed them by seeing beyond the judgements made and sentences served. On the other hand, the murder also violates a feeling of sacred and safety which one associates with good moral behaviour, as the accounts and reactions of town-people reflect in the story.
What probably best describes the book is a comment that I found at the back of my edition - "an American dream... turning into an American nightmare". It conveys the same shivery realisation of this being a world where anyone can become anything - a successful respected farmer, or a dangerously infamous criminal.
This obviously involves trying to imagine the interactions among people of which there would never be any proof whatsoever. And I appreciate the result of this attempt, the primary being studying the scarring effect this mass murder of the Clutter family created in the otherwise peaceful small farming town of Holcombe. By going "beyond the facts" in his narration, the author brings character depth and perspective of the criminals which tends to get overlooked by the immediate reactions of horror and hatred upon hearing the incident, and which naturally gets overshadowed by our emotional thirst for vengeance and simple notions of morality. The really appreciable part of the story lies in an analysis of the psyche of criminals: the extremes of feelings like insecurity and bitterness for the world around one which can make a person care less about anyone's life, and least about his/her own. The title of the story centrally captures the need to understand how isolation and rebellion are vented out through recklessness in simpler crimes; and sometimes the most chilling and horrifying crimes are unmeditated and spontaneous, seemingly "in cold blood". This historical account through such a form achieves in evoking an empathy even for cold-blooded criminals like Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickock and a cry-for-help owing to their circumstances which dented their psychological characters and led them to cross that threshold into an hateful abyss of no-return.
For the same purpose of humanising the characters, the chilly "thrill" of the real murder occupies quite a small portion of the story, but instead gives accounts of real psychological analyses that came out after this event came into light nationally and eventually, globally. It challenges the righteousness and the effective success of capital punishment and judicial system - when and how much it does/does not try to accommodate the correction in these destructive outliers of human behaviour - if human society is capable of breeding such bitterness among its individuals, then shouldn't it try to remove it by facing it instead of trying to eliminate it? Questions regarding penalising the act of taking someone's life by taking the criminal's life and higher theological, Christian notions also eventually decide the fate of the two infamous murderers in this story. Various other heinous crimes around the same time try to show the criminal sketch of those who committed them by seeing beyond the judgements made and sentences served. On the other hand, the murder also violates a feeling of sacred and safety which one associates with good moral behaviour, as the accounts and reactions of town-people reflect in the story.
What probably best describes the book is a comment that I found at the back of my edition - "an American dream... turning into an American nightmare". It conveys the same shivery realisation of this being a world where anyone can become anything - a successful respected farmer, or a dangerously infamous criminal.