Summer Crossing
A Novel
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3.2 • 31 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“Witness the coming together of Truman Capote’s voice, the electric-into-neon blaze that is surely one of the premier styles of postwar American literature.”—The Washington Post Book World
“A great breezy read . . . with Capote’s trademark wit, but also with genuine youthful awe at the exhilaration of late-forties New York.”—New York
A lost treasure only recently found, Truman Capote’s Summer Crossing is a precocious, confident first novel from one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.
Set in New York just after World War II, the story follows a young carefree socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer. Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she’s been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Capote's novel shows the promise of a future master; Campbell's interpretation shows the promise of a good reader. Campbell is better at narration than dialogue as her efforts to differentiate characters, especially males, are forced, and much of her reading is flat or breathy. But she handles some of Capote's best writing with a range and flare that bode well for future audios. Capote told everyone he'd destroyed his earliest effort (produced at age 19), but it recently turned up at Sotheby's, handwritten in four ruled school notebooks. The plot is thin and the characters weak. With her Fifth Avenue Protestant parents off in Europe, 17-year-old Grady rebels by intensifying an affair with and quickly marrying a parking lot attendant from a dysfunctional Brooklyn Jewish family. She soon finds herself pregnant and wallows in regret. But there are glimpses of Capote's signature style that emerged only four years later in Other Voices, Other Rooms, and a hint of Breakfast at Tiffany's' Holly Golightly in the character of Grady McNeil. For Capote mavens or those whose interest has been piqued by the movie Summer Crossing is worth a listen. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover.
