“It may be normal but I’d rather be natural.”
And thus defines the tale of Holiday Golightly, the self-proclaimed
‘wild child’ – and who soon becomes the obsession of the narrator after she
opens up to him after a disastrous incident with a client. A person with a
murky past that is hidden well despite a talkative nature, and a distaste of
caged animals – but someone who proves to be true to the people she cares
about.
The story is a lot about the absence of restraint in life,
but it is mainly centred on these two curious residents of a brownstone in New
York with a very sedentary movement of scene. Holiday or ‘Holly’ as she is more
commonly called, is a person of curious repute living in the same building as
the narrator, who is a budding author. Connected by her need for him to let her
in (she has a proclivity of loosing the key to the building), the writer
befriends Holly very intimately – so far as to be called by her brother’s name
and given free reign to visit despite Holly’s busy hours.
SPOILERS FOLLOW..........
As the weeks go, the writer learns a lot about Holly. How
she is sometimes called an escort, but not always physical in her interactions with her clients
including a certain jailed mafia boss called Sally. Despite being crude and
showing a brutal honesty in how she deals with the men in her life, the writer
also notices her tender care of a stray cat and her interest in the writer’s
success despite a clear dislike of his stories.
Holly’s fondness for Tiffany’s is particularly striking. She
claims to have breakfast there while window gazing – she has an expensive
lifestyle but as the writer notes, the value of something from Tiffany’s is
always priceless to her. Of everything in New York, that is her safe place where she can be unconcerned by the worries in her life.
In between, the writer learns a lot about Holly. She reads
about horses and baseball mainly as conversation topics for the men. And her
brother Fred is in the army and that they were taken in when very young and orphaned
by Doc Golightly. She married him when she was 14 but fled to the city soon
after when O.J. Berman discovered her and introduced her to the high life. She
engages in a long term relationship with a trustfund baby called Rusty Trawler
but makes it clear she isn’t in love with him.
Finally, just as she decides to leave for Brazil to marry a
handsome politician named Jose, things take a dark turn when she is arrested in
connection to the mafia’s drug ring. Despite being innocent, Jose calls the
wedding off. ‘Fred’ is coerced into helping her escape the country and does so
with a heavy heart. Her cat is also set free, though she does return for it
only to find the feline fled. Months later, long after ‘Fred’ fullfills his
last promise to Holly to find her cat, he receives a letter from her with no
return address.
The central theme of home and specifically its absence descends
heavily on the story. Holly is in constant agony over this, giving both verbal
and non-verbal cues. Her address reads ‘travelling’ while she refrains from
naming the cat she took in as according to her, if I name it, she gives it a
home it might not want. In fact, the general thoughts associated with cats seem
to be attributed to her as well. A pretty exterior covering up a deceitful
nature. But the truth is very different.
Despite abandoning her husband, she makes it clear why it wasn’t a good
decision to marry at such an early age. And despite being thought to be a gold
digger, she refrains from marrying Rusty and instead goes for Jose, who she
loves, despite the issues associated in that union. Her visits to Sally
ultimately lead to her incarceration but it’s made evident she does it out of
love for the old man who becomes a father figure to her. As for the writer, she
shows a tenderness and goes all out for her friend, saving him from a horse
related accident and attempting to help his writing career.
But Holly’s chink is that she is constantly in fear of loss –
but not in the normal sense. When she receives the news of the death of her
brother in the war, she destroys her entire apartment – belonging has never
been a very strong emotion associated with her as she gets more attached to
people than places. Her brother’s death is a true loss and it’s one of the few
moments when Holly shows genuine and fierce emotion.
In the end, 40s New York is an era of lost souls and dreams
with the country having just risen out of the great depression and entering the
second World War. And even as the writer returns to his own haunts and finds
some news of Holly being in Africa, there’s only one thought that passes
through his mind. That Holly has managed to find home – just as he hopes her
cat has. The time of uncertainty plagues both central figures in different
ways, and only hope sustains both of them through tough times.
The main characters are beautifully crafted, especially Holly. And Capote specifically keeps people like Jose and the landlord Madame Spanella as caricatures to serve as constant reminders of the opposition Holly faces in finding acceptance and love. Sally remains unseen throughout the story, but his true deception reinforces the barriers to Holly's happiness. Even the barman Joe's love is an abstract love of the exterior. Only the writer sees Holly's true side - and despite his efforts, has to be content with friendship. But then, sometimes that's stronger and more truer than love.
So, I give it 9.5 out of 10.
+Mesmerizing characters
+Great use of an economical setting
+The side characters all provide important roles
-The accented language is a bit hard to follow sometimes
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