“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. “
This book is such a scathing attack on the high society. The way people behaved behind closed doors was an eye opener. Truman Capote became a pariah after this book.
What do you think of this book? How much of the three parts described in this book do you think is entirely factual? Most importantly would you recommend this book?
Edit: The name of the book is **Answered Prayers**
by EmphasisCheap8611
7 Comments
AAaaaaand it goes on the reading list!
That sounds really interesting. I haven’t read it, but I wonder if Capote’s friends shunned him because they saw truth about themselves in it and they didn’t like it.
Well…the name of the book is Answered Prayers. Not Unanswered. Also, it was published posthumously, so its publication didn’t make him a pariah.
There were some excerpts published and *those* offended some society types who thought they were his friends. But the “book” itself was a mess of haphazard words cobbled together by an editor.
Poor Truman. In reality he was suffering from writer’s block, and the “work in progress” was barely a work at all.
I had no idea it even existed until now. I’ve only read In Cold Blood. I guess I’ve got some shopping to do today.
OP if you like Capote you should check out *Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball* by Deborah Davis.
A nice companion read to Unanswered Prayers is the novel **The Swans of Fifth Avenue, by Melanie Benjamin**. The novel explores the history of Capote’s relationships with the various New York high society women he wrote about in La Cote Basque 1965.
I haven’t read the novel and don’t intended to, but I do know that the ladies who adored Truman Capote & considered him a great friend were not happy with the book and banished him from their lives, especially Babe Paley and Slim Keith. But when Capote passed away at Joanna Carson’s house in 1984, she remarked in an interview hat Truman didn’t include anything in his book that no one knew about beforehand, so who knows?
Nancy “Slim” Keith’s memoir was published posthumously after her death in 1990, great reading, and she was very close to Truman Capote and devoted a whole chapter to him, explaining why she–and so many others–refused to have anything further to do with him after **Answered Prayers** was published.