A review by femkereindeer
Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

4.0

I loved the prose in this book, and the Southern Gothic themes were hauntingly beautiful. The descriptions of the muggy summer heat, buzzing mosquitos, and opulent but dilapidated rooms had me feeling like I could really experience the environment, and it was interesting to see how that created an unsettling feeling for the reader (aka me). However, the plot sometimes felt a little lackluster, seemingly jumping from one event to another without much of a driving force that was leading us somewhere. It's also unclear to me where the climax of the story was meant to fall; the sudden reveal from Randolph felt unexpected and underwhelming, and then the eventual conclusion of the book didn't seem to relate very clearly to the main theme of the book, which was Joel's desire to be loved. Overall though, the experience of reading this book was quite lovely and interesting, and I'm curious to see if rereading it at some point will make more of the plot-related choices make sense to me.