Review of 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote

And I said, what about, Breakfast at Tiffany's, she said she thinks she remembers that film.

I've had these lyrics stuck in my head for as long as I've been reading this novel, and I'm pretty sure everyone's sick of me constantly singing it. It goes to show how much this novel has affected modern culture: we have songs about it, a film about it. Speaking of the film, it features one of Audrey Hepburn's most iconic acting and looks. I had to see what all the fuss was about.

I was honestly surprised with the sexual liberation that emerged in Breakfast at Tiffany's. It actually challenges some conservative ideas that people still hold today. Holly Golightly, our protagonist, is essentially an escort. She earns her way through life by attaching herself to rich men, and doing (mostly) what they wish. Despite being accused of whoring herself out by several characters, Holly has only slept with seven men. 

Sadly for our narrator, he was not one of the seven, and at some points I'm sure he would have loved to have been. Through him, we realise that Holly is a woman who will never be boxed into a corner. All her possessions are eternally ready to move at any point. She can flit from one lover to another. She's almost an ethereal being in this respect: things and people don't impact Holly, Holly impacts things and people. 

I was truly surprised, and honestly happy to see that Holly was not straight. This is probably the oldest book that I've read in which a bisexual main character exists, and is free with the information about it. There are points at which Holly calls herself a 'dyke' in pretense; she uses the word to get out of sexual encounters with men. However, she does mention having sex with a woman at one point. This unfortunately fits into the homophobic rhetoric of bisexual women being promiscuous and sleeping around, but we do find out that Holly does not have as much sex as she seems to be having. 

I think this is such an important book to read, and to compare to American novels written a couple of decades beforehand. I haven't read many North American books written in the early 1960s, so it really felt like a massive shift was had when I came across this.

Have you read it? What did you think?