***
ON OUR BOOKSHELVES
***
NOVEL: The Swans of Fifth Avenue
AUTHOR: Melanie Benjamin
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2016
REVIEW:
I picked up The Swans of Fifth Avenue, a novel depicting famous people in 1950s New York, thinking it would be a gossip-y, light read. It was, certainly…there’s plenty here about the socialites (“the swans”), where they went, how they dressed, their pasts, their glamorous homes, and life with every luxury money could buy. It tells the story of how Truman Capote befriended them, made his unlikely entrance into elite society, entertained them at his famous Black and White Ball, and caused a literary scandal when he published “La Cote Basque 1965” in Esquire, revealing the swans’ “dirty laundry,” and resulting in his social ostracism—a breach of friendship that was never repaired, and apparently pushed him further into a downward spiral of alcoholism, drug addiction, and increasingly erratic behavior. So there’s plenty here that’s salacious and unseemly, and it’s definitely a compulsively readable book.
But to my surprise, I found it rather more than that, because at its heart, The Swans of Fifth Avenue is a love story: the story of the most surprising affection between Truman Capote and Babe Paley. They made an extremely odd couple, the charming and beautiful society hostess and the short, eccentric, and openly homosexual writer, but somehow, they were kindred spirits, and their relationship as described here is extremely affecting. There’s a true emotional depth to their love story. And, like so many of the best love stories, it has a sad ending. I was much more touched by their heartaches, loneliness, betrayals, vulnerabilities, and deaths than I had expected…and I love that. It’s wonderful and impressive when a novelist can make such a rarefied world of celebrity and wealth, so distant from the way we live now, come alive.
***
I’ve read Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and In Cold Blood, and of course, To Kill a Mockingbird (in which Dill is based on Truman Capote as a child). I was familiar with Capote’s Black and White Ball partly through its reputation as the party of the century, but chiefly because I’d read Katherine Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, in which she describes being the honoree. But the social history depicted in The Swans of Fifth Avenue is absolutely fascinating, and really enhances those other books for me by putting them in perspective.
***
The one thing this book lacks is photographs…I hope that the author, at some point, releases an illustrated version, so we can see just in print just how beautiful Babe and her friends (Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, Pamela Churchill, C.Z. Guest) were, the clothes, the jewelry, the elegant apartments, the masquerade ball, the dinners out, the celebrities, the yachts. For now, there’s Google images. But even without the photographs, Melanie Benjamin conjures up their world rather remarkably.
***
This is certainly a beach read, but you may find it more than a beach read, so do not be surprised to find yourself engrossed, and possibly more than a little moved.
***
RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3 1/2 Whistles
***
HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
***
Lead-In Image Courtesy of nadtytok / Shutterstock.com
***
Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com
***
ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Countess Below Stairs, Eva Ibbotson
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anne Of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Books for Living, Will Schwalbe
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield
Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly
Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne
Hide My Eyes, Margery Allingham
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Madeleine’s Ghost, Robert Girardi
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli
Straying from the Flock: Travels in New Zealand, Alexander Elder
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Missing Piece, Shel Silverstein
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel (illustrator), Maurice Sendak (introduction)
The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The Weird World of Wes Beattie, John Norman Harris
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
The Women in Black, Madeleine St John
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Thing Explainer, Randall Munroe
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
— # —