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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
It's Fruitcake Weather!
Review of the Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (2006) of the original Mademoiselle magazine article (1956)
A Christmas Memory is Truman Capote's (1924-1984) short story memoir of his childhood self and the rituals surrounding Christmases spent with his elderly female cousin and their dog Queenie in Depression era rural Alabama. It covers their leadup to Christmas with the preparation of fruitcakes in November (one of which is sent to the Roosevelts in the White House), the making of simple handcrafted Christmas presents and the joy of kite flying. This 2006 Knopf edition is considerably enhanced by the lovely detailed illustrations of [a:Beth Peck|114895|Beth Peck|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1609698183p2/114895.jpg] which are a complete delight. The illustrations were first included in a 1989 printing.
This edition includes an audiobook version narrated by Celeste Holm on CD as a bonus. It seemed as if Holm reads it a bit too fast at 26 minutes. I think that impression comes from it being too much of a contrast to your own leisurely reading of the print version, where you will linger over the details of the charming illustrations.
My thanks to Karan for this delightful gift!
Trivia and Links
A Christmas Memory has had many adaptations for TV, stage and recordings. The 1966 version for television with actress Geraldine Page as Cousin Sook and voiceover narration by Truman Capote can be seen on YouTube here.
Truman Capote gave his own reading on a 1959 LP for United Artists which you can also hear on YouTube here. Capote's reading is about 33.5' minutes (there is music at the beginning and end of the 37' album).
Review of the Alfred A. Knopf hardcover edition (2006) of the original Mademoiselle magazine article (1956)
A Christmas Memory is Truman Capote's (1924-1984) short story memoir of his childhood self and the rituals surrounding Christmases spent with his elderly female cousin and their dog Queenie in Depression era rural Alabama. It covers their leadup to Christmas with the preparation of fruitcakes in November (one of which is sent to the Roosevelts in the White House), the making of simple handcrafted Christmas presents and the joy of kite flying. This 2006 Knopf edition is considerably enhanced by the lovely detailed illustrations of [a:Beth Peck|114895|Beth Peck|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1609698183p2/114895.jpg] which are a complete delight. The illustrations were first included in a 1989 printing.
This edition includes an audiobook version narrated by Celeste Holm on CD as a bonus. It seemed as if Holm reads it a bit too fast at 26 minutes. I think that impression comes from it being too much of a contrast to your own leisurely reading of the print version, where you will linger over the details of the charming illustrations.
My thanks to Karan for this delightful gift!
Trivia and Links
A Christmas Memory has had many adaptations for TV, stage and recordings. The 1966 version for television with actress Geraldine Page as Cousin Sook and voiceover narration by Truman Capote can be seen on YouTube here.
Truman Capote gave his own reading on a 1959 LP for United Artists which you can also hear on YouTube here. Capote's reading is about 33.5' minutes (there is music at the beginning and end of the 37' album).
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Certainly glad I finished reading it, I wish I had been warned. It was more like a journal than a story.
Truth v emotional truth…
This is a short collection of six stories, some of them autobiographical, others fictional. A couple of them are set at Christmas, while Thanksgiving and birthdays make appearances in others. For me, the collection was divided strictly down the middle. The three autobiographical ones were overly sentimental, veering perilously close to mawkishness, and full of preachy moral lessons the young Capote learned from his wise but childlike elderly cousin. The three fictional ones, however, were excellent – emotional, certainly, but with an underlying feeling of truthfulness that I found sadly lacking in the autobiographical ones. Since it’s a short collection, here’s a brief idea of each story:
A Christmas Memory – here we meet young Buddy, as the child Capote was known, as he and his cousin prepare for Christmas. There is much baking of cakes and collecting of boughs to decorate the house, and so on. The impression is of a rather lonely child, living with elderly relatives because of some family problem. The elderly cousin, here unnamed, is dismissed by her siblings as somewhat simple, but to Buddy she has retained her childlike innocence and sense of joy in life. It’s beautifully written, but too sentimentalised to ring wholly true.
A Thanksgiving Visitor – now we learn that the elderly cousin is called Miss Sook, and that the family problem is the separation and divorce of young Buddy’s parents, each of whom has gone off to live his or her own life leaving Buddy in the care of relatives. In this one, Buddy is being bullied by a boy at school, and Miss Sook sets out to deal with the issue by inviting the boy to Thanksgiving dinner, much to Buddy’s horror. Buddy behaves badly, and is taught a moral lesson that will stand him in good stead for life. My contemporaneous note about this one contained the words “self-pitying” and “trite”.
One Christmas – in this last of the autobiographical stories, Buddy’s father decides the boy should spend Christmas with him in New Orleans. Buddy barely knows his father, and has to travel hundreds of miles all alone to stay with this stranger. We learn more about his parents in this one, and if true (and I have no reason to doubt it) they were a pretty appalling pair. Buddy behaves rather badly, and when he gets home Miss Sook teaches him a moral lesson, blah, blah, blah. This one tipped right over into mawkishness, leaving me feeling as if I’d seriously over-indulged in Christmas cake. I was glad to move on to the fictional stories!
Master Misery – this is a strange, sad and rather haunting story of a young woman who leaves her small town to come to New York, full of dreams of how wonderful life will be there. But of course it isn’t, and she finds herself in a dreary job with no spare money for fun. So when she hears of a man who will pay to have other people’s dreams related to him, she goes to see him. There’s a mystical edge to this, although it never quite tips over into the supernatural. It’s a kind of allegory on the difficulty of keeping dreams alive when faced with the harshness of reality. Beautifully written, emotional in a good way, and thought-provoking.
Children on Their Birthdays – the story of Miss Bobbit, a little girl who comes to stay in town. She dresses oddly and behaves like an imperious grown-up lady, and two of the boys in the neighbourhood are so smitten with her that their lifelong friendship is broken by their mutual jealousy. That’s where the story starts, not where it ends. The ending, in fact, is told to us at the beginning – Miss Bobbit dies, run over by a bus. However, the real emotion of the story is in the boys’ friendship rather than their feelings for the girl. It’s a wonderful depiction of the hormonal angst of teenage boys discovering girls for the first time.
Jug of Silver – this is probably the least overtly emotional story in the collection and a rather more cheerful one to end on. As a publicity stunt, the owner of the local drug store fills a jug with coins and promises to give it on Christmas Eve to the customer who guesses nearest to the total in the jug. A poor little boy called Appleseed is determined to win, but first he has to find the money to buy something in the store to qualify for a guess. He comes every day to stare at the jug, and says he’s counting the coins. The story itself is enjoyable, but the real interest is in the depiction of small town life, with some lovely descriptions of the preparations for Christmas.
The whole thing reminded me rather of the Avonlea-based short stories of LM Montgomery: warm, full of moral lessons and with a love of small town life, and walking that dangerous tightrope between emotionalism and mawkishness. For me, Montgomery manages the balance better, and her insertion of humour lifts the overall tone. There’s not a lot of humour in this collection and a good deal too much self-pity. I feel harsh saying that, because if “Buddy’s” depiction of his parents is authentic, then he had some reason to feel sorry for his younger self, though it would seem he lived a pretty pampered life in material terms in comparison to the poverty of many of those around him. But he milks it too much for my taste, I fear. Overall, I gave each of the three fictional stories five stars, but the autobiographical ones only managed to scrape a generous three apiece.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Classics via NetGalley.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
This is a short collection of six stories, some of them autobiographical, others fictional. A couple of them are set at Christmas, while Thanksgiving and birthdays make appearances in others. For me, the collection was divided strictly down the middle. The three autobiographical ones were overly sentimental, veering perilously close to mawkishness, and full of preachy moral lessons the young Capote learned from his wise but childlike elderly cousin. The three fictional ones, however, were excellent – emotional, certainly, but with an underlying feeling of truthfulness that I found sadly lacking in the autobiographical ones. Since it’s a short collection, here’s a brief idea of each story:
A Christmas Memory – here we meet young Buddy, as the child Capote was known, as he and his cousin prepare for Christmas. There is much baking of cakes and collecting of boughs to decorate the house, and so on. The impression is of a rather lonely child, living with elderly relatives because of some family problem. The elderly cousin, here unnamed, is dismissed by her siblings as somewhat simple, but to Buddy she has retained her childlike innocence and sense of joy in life. It’s beautifully written, but too sentimentalised to ring wholly true.
A Thanksgiving Visitor – now we learn that the elderly cousin is called Miss Sook, and that the family problem is the separation and divorce of young Buddy’s parents, each of whom has gone off to live his or her own life leaving Buddy in the care of relatives. In this one, Buddy is being bullied by a boy at school, and Miss Sook sets out to deal with the issue by inviting the boy to Thanksgiving dinner, much to Buddy’s horror. Buddy behaves badly, and is taught a moral lesson that will stand him in good stead for life. My contemporaneous note about this one contained the words “self-pitying” and “trite”.
One Christmas – in this last of the autobiographical stories, Buddy’s father decides the boy should spend Christmas with him in New Orleans. Buddy barely knows his father, and has to travel hundreds of miles all alone to stay with this stranger. We learn more about his parents in this one, and if true (and I have no reason to doubt it) they were a pretty appalling pair. Buddy behaves rather badly, and when he gets home Miss Sook teaches him a moral lesson, blah, blah, blah. This one tipped right over into mawkishness, leaving me feeling as if I’d seriously over-indulged in Christmas cake. I was glad to move on to the fictional stories!
Master Misery – this is a strange, sad and rather haunting story of a young woman who leaves her small town to come to New York, full of dreams of how wonderful life will be there. But of course it isn’t, and she finds herself in a dreary job with no spare money for fun. So when she hears of a man who will pay to have other people’s dreams related to him, she goes to see him. There’s a mystical edge to this, although it never quite tips over into the supernatural. It’s a kind of allegory on the difficulty of keeping dreams alive when faced with the harshness of reality. Beautifully written, emotional in a good way, and thought-provoking.
Children on Their Birthdays – the story of Miss Bobbit, a little girl who comes to stay in town. She dresses oddly and behaves like an imperious grown-up lady, and two of the boys in the neighbourhood are so smitten with her that their lifelong friendship is broken by their mutual jealousy. That’s where the story starts, not where it ends. The ending, in fact, is told to us at the beginning – Miss Bobbit dies, run over by a bus. However, the real emotion of the story is in the boys’ friendship rather than their feelings for the girl. It’s a wonderful depiction of the hormonal angst of teenage boys discovering girls for the first time.
Jug of Silver – this is probably the least overtly emotional story in the collection and a rather more cheerful one to end on. As a publicity stunt, the owner of the local drug store fills a jug with coins and promises to give it on Christmas Eve to the customer who guesses nearest to the total in the jug. A poor little boy called Appleseed is determined to win, but first he has to find the money to buy something in the store to qualify for a guess. He comes every day to stare at the jug, and says he’s counting the coins. The story itself is enjoyable, but the real interest is in the depiction of small town life, with some lovely descriptions of the preparations for Christmas.
The whole thing reminded me rather of the Avonlea-based short stories of LM Montgomery: warm, full of moral lessons and with a love of small town life, and walking that dangerous tightrope between emotionalism and mawkishness. For me, Montgomery manages the balance better, and her insertion of humour lifts the overall tone. There’s not a lot of humour in this collection and a good deal too much self-pity. I feel harsh saying that, because if “Buddy’s” depiction of his parents is authentic, then he had some reason to feel sorry for his younger self, though it would seem he lived a pretty pampered life in material terms in comparison to the poverty of many of those around him. But he milks it too much for my taste, I fear. Overall, I gave each of the three fictional stories five stars, but the autobiographical ones only managed to scrape a generous three apiece.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Classics via NetGalley.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
dark
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Animal death, Bullying, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Racism, Suicide, Death of parent, Alcohol, Classism
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This was such a sweet, sweet story. I had to wait for it from the library hence why I read it in January. I've got the movie version waiting for me to see next. The book was written in 1956, the movie in 1997 starring Patty Duke, Piper Laurie and Eric Lloyd as Buddy. The About the Author written in the back of the book says it all:
"Until he was ten years old, Truman Capote lived with a family of distant and elderly cousins in a small town in rural Alabaman. A Christmas Memory is a frankly autobiographical story about those years and especially of his relationship with one of the cousins, Miss Sook Faulk. The photograph on the cover of this edition is of the author and Miss Faulk, who died in 1938 while Mr. Capote was a student at a military academy in New York State."
Unfortunately my copy of the book is missing the picture.
"Until he was ten years old, Truman Capote lived with a family of distant and elderly cousins in a small town in rural Alabaman. A Christmas Memory is a frankly autobiographical story about those years and especially of his relationship with one of the cousins, Miss Sook Faulk. The photograph on the cover of this edition is of the author and Miss Faulk, who died in 1938 while Mr. Capote was a student at a military academy in New York State."
Unfortunately my copy of the book is missing the picture.
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated