This is the first book I read (a long, long time ago) that infused a real-world incident with the fiction that surrounds telling a good story.
Using the horrific murders as a backdrop, we get a vision of the perpetrators and the victims, their lives, their quashed hopes, and the people left to tell the story. It was at my initial reading of In Cold Blood that I saw a storyteller (Capote) crafting a story around an event – a series of events.
As a fellow storyteller, I couldn’t get enough…I still can’t. I read the book every few years, and still find nuggets of brilliant writing that I’d missed previously.
In my book, I took the actions that I witnessed, that powered a series of events, and the personalities of the good and bad people in them, and enrobed them with the dialogue that describes their motivations. You know these people, but you really don’t, because people aren’t always what they seem.
Why do people cheat? Who cheats and who doesn’t? What is the outcome of good and bad behavior? How can good come from the wrong places? The story is like our lives – both heartwarming and terrifying. A reader will come away knowing that good can triumph over evil in many ways, but evil can also creep in and stay, forcing us to deal with it.
It will warm your heart, you’ll find yourself identifying with one or more characters (I do, can you guess which one?), even one or more of the horses.
The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly…
Reentering the world of myth is something I haven’t done much since college.
Frankly, the characters weren’t identifiable to me, even if the stories were timeless and I could see them repeated in books, movies, and stories I loved. Then came The Song of Achilles and suddenly the fairy-tale characters took on more real lives, became real people. Even if they were Greek gods, they acted as mortals, the way we do.
The stories I tell have similar mythic characters, who act in ways that we don’t expect, who do things we could do, but don’t out of fear of ridicule or worse. But in the end, some succeed and some fail, just like in life.
**OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD** **A 10th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION, FEATURING A NEW FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR**
WINNER OF THE ORANGE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms…
It is so much like my book: A woman who uses her talent to save others at great personal cost to herself.
Smith used her talents to overcome crime bosses and smugglers, then transferred her skills to fight Nazis in the war. She acted in secret to outwit Hitler. The concept is riveting and in parallel to my own story of a woman who uses her particular skills to outwit others.
She didn’t do anything so noble as to save the world from Naziism, but she saved her family, gave her husband his life back, and had a great time doing it.
Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II.
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth…
The Last Horseman is the story of a remarkable man, a remarkable woman, a remarkable horse, and friendships. Set in the theatre of horse racing, The Last Horseman is about a woman, who – when faced with the challenge of financial ruin – empowers herself to outsmart liars, cheaters, and the horse racing community. With the help of a dangerous organized crime boss, she wins millions of dollars to give her husband back his self-respect and his shot at the biggest race of the year. This is a story of love and deception, of surprise and terror, of money and sex, and of how doing the right thing can come from the most unexpected place.
The Last Horseman demonstrates once and for all that horses are definitely smarter than people.
