A moving account of Capote's own giddy, talent-fuelled ascent and the self-destructive plummet that follows Mail on Sunday

Styan, J. L. (1984). All's Well that Ends Well. Manchester University Press. p.48. ISBN 9780719009990 . Retrieved 21 April 2019. A fascinating look at American high society in the Sixties and Seventies, and a portrait of a talented writer who couldn’t resist gossip, even if meant ruining his life Stylist I’ll start with what I did like. The book paints a portrait of a man from lonely beginnings, who seeks validation through his work, and his association with the rich and famous. There is tragic irony in the fact that his own thirst for attention causes him to betray the very people who give him companionship, threatening to leave him more alone than ever as he slips into a fugue of addiction and lies. The use of narrative voice is also interesting, the ‘swans’ narrating the story as a collective ‘we’.The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” We aren’t characters for your amusement, Truman. We’re women. Real women. And those are our lives you’re so casually scribbling.

In November 1965, "La Cote Basque", a chapter from Truman Capote's work-in-progress, Answered Prayers - The Unfinished Novel, was published in Esquire magazine. It was a thinly veiled and very unflattering expose of the lives of Truman's circle of society friends. It's publication led to those friends deserting Truman and, in turn, to his gradual decline until he eventually died in 1984. A compelling, engrossing and evocative read, it is testament to Kelleigh’s talent as a storyteller, that in the hours that have passed since I finished Swan Song, I have been trawling the internet to find out more about this one-time literary great. A pacy read about celebrity and fame, secrets and betrayal, I defy anyone to read Swan Song without immediately wanted to delve deeper into the life of Truman Capote. About Swan Song Hart, Christopher (20 January 2008). "Love hurts – but why does it feel so good?". The Sunday Times. p.18 . Retrieved 20 April 2019.Author: Kent-based freelance conference producer Laura Marshall is a recent graduate of Curtis Brown Creative three month writing course. Friend Request was the runner up for The Bath Novel Award 2016and was also shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016. After his Mother abandoned him he must have felt very ambivalent about women and perhaps was incontrovertibly drawn to them, yet wanted to punish them (and thus perhaps unconsciously punish his mother). A tortured soul who indeed perhaps wasn’t, as he feared, altogether loveable. After all, a caring mother, if she loves her child, wouldn’t abandon her child and therefore she must have abandoned him because he was so unloveable (a common extrapolation that features in people with abandonment issues). Prepublication, Swan Song was the winner of the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a first novel, was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award, the Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Coveney, Michael (30 October 1994). "Theatre: Words used as weapons". The Observer. London, England. p.12, Review . Retrieved 20 April 2019.