Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
Other Voices, Other Rooms was Truman Capote’s first published novel; Summer Crossing was written earlier, but the manuscript was believed to have been lost or destroyed until it was rediscovered in 2005. The story of how the manuscript came to be published is more interesting than the novella itself. A semi-autobiographical coming of age novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms is lusciously poetic and attuned to the pains associated with growing up.
After the death of his mother, Joel Harrison Knox – much accepted as a stand in for Capote himself – receives a letter from his father beckoning him to stay with him in rural Alabama. Once there, living in a faded and decaying mansion with his stepmother Miss Amy and the decadent Cousin Randolph, the father is curiously absent. As Joel settles into his new residence and becomes acquainted with a number of increasingly strange characters, the truth gradually reveals itself.
He had reached the garden by following a path which led round from the front of the house through the rampart of interlacing trees. And here, in the overgrown confusion, were some plants taller than his head, and others razor-sharp with thorns; brittle sun-curled leaves crackled under his cautious step. The dry, tangled weeds grew waist high. The sultry smells of summer and sweet shrub and dark earth were heavy, and the itchy whirr of bumblebees stung the silence. He could hardly raise his eyes upward, for the sky was pure blue fire.
Capote is greatly skilled in building a foreboding sense of dread and unease. As Joel gets to know the characters and they reveal their peculiarities to him, there is an overwhelming impression of a sinister hand at work. His friendships with tomboy Idabel and the household servants Zoo and Jesus are all too briefly explored; I would have loved to have spent more time with these characters. Zoo, in particular.
But there was no prayer in Joel’s mind; rather, nothing a net of words could capture, for, with one exception, all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil-paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.
The final third of the novel is fuelled by an unrelentingly frantic energy; the line between reality and imagination is frequently blurred beyond all recognition, and the novel takes on a hallucinatory tone. This part was my favourite, the writing is vigorous and captures the imagination in a vivid and memorable way. Capote’s descriptions of the natural landscapes are really magnificent and evocative. Although Joel has to leave behind a part of himself as he becomes immured in the complex world of adult relationships and family dramas, the writing is really special. Sparkling, but with a hint of dirt as well; it lacks the relative lightness of Breakfast at Tiffany’s but it works in Other Voices, Other Rooms‘ favour.
