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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
First time reading this author and enjoying the memories of the season.
1956 author lives with many relatives in Alabama and tells us of his memories around the autumn getting closer to Christmas.
He gives descriptive details of all the scenes in front of him. Woman lives still in her childhood days although she's in her late 80s.
They take the baby carriage and go to the garden, it's used for everything they need it for. They collected nuts for their first fruitcake , they want to make 30 of them.
Next day they will shop at the store and know exactly what they need. No money so how will they buy the groceries.
They've earned money all year long selling off some things at the farm. Like where they hide their fruitcake money. The woman has never been to the movie.
She gives him ten cents to go see a movie then sit and tell her about the movie. Love list of everything she has done, classic. They even made money killing flies in August.
Relatives decide it's time for him to enter the military and off he goes. He still gets fruitcake every year and he's amazed as to how she can do it all herself.
Sad at the end but the memories are golden.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
First time reading this author and enjoying the memories of the season.
1956 author lives with many relatives in Alabama and tells us of his memories around the autumn getting closer to Christmas.
He gives descriptive details of all the scenes in front of him. Woman lives still in her childhood days although she's in her late 80s.
They take the baby carriage and go to the garden, it's used for everything they need it for. They collected nuts for their first fruitcake , they want to make 30 of them.
Next day they will shop at the store and know exactly what they need. No money so how will they buy the groceries.
They've earned money all year long selling off some things at the farm. Like where they hide their fruitcake money. The woman has never been to the movie.
She gives him ten cents to go see a movie then sit and tell her about the movie. Love list of everything she has done, classic. They even made money killing flies in August.
Relatives decide it's time for him to enter the military and off he goes. He still gets fruitcake every year and he's amazed as to how she can do it all herself.
Sad at the end but the memories are golden.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
I will have to read more by Capote. I really enjoyed his style.
This is an ideal read for the season. It has all the Christmas cheer, the setting, having faith, hope and goodwill and living life joyfully despite facing hardships.
It’s a short story about a seven-year-old boy and his sixty-something lady cousin who would call him Buddy.
They both are best friends and are enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas, although they are very poor. They are passionate about the festival, they plan for it, work hard to make treats, get the tree on their own and happily exchange gifts.
Movies based on Christmas nowadays, rather depict people from an economically sounder background. The hardships faced by poor families are what is portrayed in this story.
A short simple sweet yet poignant read, I am sure people will love to read this season!
It’s a short story about a seven-year-old boy and his sixty-something lady cousin who would call him Buddy.
They both are best friends and are enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas, although they are very poor. They are passionate about the festival, they plan for it, work hard to make treats, get the tree on their own and happily exchange gifts.
Movies based on Christmas nowadays, rather depict people from an economically sounder background. The hardships faced by poor families are what is portrayed in this story.
A short simple sweet yet poignant read, I am sure people will love to read this season!
The person who gifted me this book got it from a blind bin with the description: “O’Henry Award Winner. Cozy classics. Makes for a great gift.” All great descriptions. The stories are quick and heartfelt. Capote has a way of describing people that makes you feel like you know them, instantly. I loved that these tales were taken from his life, from an era long gone and unknown to me.
Truman Capote spent part of his childhood with extended family as his parents left him to pursue their own lives and these stories are based on this time in his life. His closest friend was a great aunt and these stories center on their wonderful relationship. They were poor and lived in rural Alabama and their holidays were very simple and old-fashioned. Capote was such a gifted writer, I was immediately transported back 80 years. This was a perfect read for this time of year.
I loved this so much. I foresee a new Christmas tradition of reading this with my family each season.
A powerful memory of a childhood spent torn between parents and family members. Very fast read. Story seems to be missing something at the end.
Great little story about fruitcakes. Never thought there would be a story about fruitcakes. Story was simple and easy to read.
This was a great way to ease into the festive reads I have planned. Truman Capote’s writing is so elegant and evocative, in no time at all you find yourself in the South, rooting in the bushes for pecans and berries to go in the Christmas cakes you’ll send off to the White House.
This series of short stories centres mainly around Buddy and Miss Sook, best friends and cousins who just happen to be decades apart in age. We travel with Buddy through a few different Christmases, getting to know Miss Sook and Queenie, the rat terrier, as well as Buddy’s school mates and his hopes and dreams.
One of the things I like the best about memoirs is that you don’t have to hold out to the end of the story to find out what happened. There’s little narrative tension because you find out the beginning, middle and end of the character arc in the same twenty pages. Buddy’s Dad, seen through the eyes of a child who’s never been out of Alabama and is summoned to New Orleans, is a drunk who is trying his best with a child he’s never taken an interest in before. It becomes clear that he only really wants to check that Buddy isn’t ‘going wrong’ hanging about with his cousin Sook, who is still a child, really. Fast forward and the end of the story tells us that he is long dead, and his death revealed a sentimental depth to him the young Buddy didn’t realise.
Capote writes like a child, in that you can feel his frustration at being picked on by the school bully who is promptly invited to tea – on Christmas, no less! How unfair that his bad behaviour is rewarded. You are right with him when he’s scrimping together enough money to post the Christmas cakes, to make the kite for Miss Sook when he knows she is also making him one. It’s a really impressive, multi layered show of writing in that you can read the Buddy as an adult looking back, knowing what he knows now of people and the family around him, but also through his younger self’s perspective when there was a lot you didn’t know, were protected from, or didn’t understand.
I have read Capote before, a long time ago – Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the other stories in that collection. After reading this one, I’d like to go on to read In Cold Blood as I think the way he understands people, even those who you think shouldn’t be afforded the privilege of empathy, is fascinating.
I recommend this for everyone looking for a way to get into the Christmas spirit, via little windows to someone else’s world.
Thank you as always to Netgalley for this copy and to Penguin Classics for the approval. This title is out now – a perfect stocking filler for you or for someone else!
This series of short stories centres mainly around Buddy and Miss Sook, best friends and cousins who just happen to be decades apart in age. We travel with Buddy through a few different Christmases, getting to know Miss Sook and Queenie, the rat terrier, as well as Buddy’s school mates and his hopes and dreams.
One of the things I like the best about memoirs is that you don’t have to hold out to the end of the story to find out what happened. There’s little narrative tension because you find out the beginning, middle and end of the character arc in the same twenty pages. Buddy’s Dad, seen through the eyes of a child who’s never been out of Alabama and is summoned to New Orleans, is a drunk who is trying his best with a child he’s never taken an interest in before. It becomes clear that he only really wants to check that Buddy isn’t ‘going wrong’ hanging about with his cousin Sook, who is still a child, really. Fast forward and the end of the story tells us that he is long dead, and his death revealed a sentimental depth to him the young Buddy didn’t realise.
Capote writes like a child, in that you can feel his frustration at being picked on by the school bully who is promptly invited to tea – on Christmas, no less! How unfair that his bad behaviour is rewarded. You are right with him when he’s scrimping together enough money to post the Christmas cakes, to make the kite for Miss Sook when he knows she is also making him one. It’s a really impressive, multi layered show of writing in that you can read the Buddy as an adult looking back, knowing what he knows now of people and the family around him, but also through his younger self’s perspective when there was a lot you didn’t know, were protected from, or didn’t understand.
I have read Capote before, a long time ago – Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the other stories in that collection. After reading this one, I’d like to go on to read In Cold Blood as I think the way he understands people, even those who you think shouldn’t be afforded the privilege of empathy, is fascinating.
I recommend this for everyone looking for a way to get into the Christmas spirit, via little windows to someone else’s world.
Thank you as always to Netgalley for this copy and to Penguin Classics for the approval. This title is out now – a perfect stocking filler for you or for someone else!