Capote was their improbable confidant, the vertically challenged, blond, dirt poor gay boy-man up from Alabama to New York, with a captivating self-invented persona, bolstered by the great talent which made him a wildly successful writer. From what I can see on You Tube it captures well The flamboyance of the celebrity attracting Capote.

A whirlwind of a first novel. There is great pathos in the Swans' woundings and in their inevitable decline. And the character of Truman himself shimmers through the novel in a wonderful blaze of eccentricity and excess. Outstanding.' ROSE TREMAIN Answered Prayers,” was, basically, the betrayal of the confidences that Capote gathered during his years as, ‘confessor, confidante, consigliore,’ to the socialites, society hostesses, tycoon’s wives and other wealthy women, who became known as his ‘Swans.’ When a chapter of his, long anticipated book, was published in, ”Esquire,” magazine, his beloved confidantes reacted badly to having their secrets, and barely disguised identities, available for everyone to read; resulting in Capote’s gradual decline. Jephcott is married to author Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott. They have collaborated on screenplays selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Fellowship, the Austin Film Festival, [9] and Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope.

She reminded us of Capote’s words: ‘rearrange the rules to suit yourself.’ You learn from the best, you bend the rules to suit your purposes, and you make them your own. This is a world of celebrity, of rich and privileged people who live superficial, meaningless, empty and sad lives. And it is not a world that I enjoyed spending any time in. It also seems to describe a very old story. And by extension I had next to no interest in following the names or researching the lives of those with which they interact - and the occasional names that I did recognise (for example Kennedy, Angelli, Sinatra etc) held no interest for me. Styan, J. L. (1984). All's Well that Ends Well. Manchester University Press. p.48. ISBN 9780719009990 . Retrieved 21 April 2019. A sparkling debut vividly captures the high society women who punished Capote for his indiscreet reporting" * The Guardian *

A whirlwind of a first novel. There is great pathos in the Swans' woundings and in their inevitable decline. And the character of Truman himself shimmers through the novel in a wonderful blaze of eccentricity and excess. Outstanding .' ROSE TREMAINSince reading the totally, totally beautiful Swan Song, I have two new hobbies. Googling photos of Barbara Paley and watching videos of the Camel Walk. Dolly Alderton As my opening quote implies that immediately gave me no common ground to start from, until I realised I I had one thing - I knew the famous poster of a film for which it turns out Capote wrote the originating novella. A rich, sharp, sting of a book. It made me laugh and grimace and pity monsters. I'm still smiling about it Stu Turton, bestselling author of THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote would have been proud" -- Alex Preston * The Observer * Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.

Tom manages a theatre in Somerset under threat of closure, prompting locals to rally round to try and save it. Gorgeous... That glittering world - all Dom Perignon, Sobranies, Quaalude and Chanel - is recreated with a lovely eye for detail Robbie Millen, The Times The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.”She deftly gives us an insight into their inner lives... while creating defined personalities that resonate and intrigue. Lyrical and fascinating, the fact that this is Greenberg-Jephcott's debut is astounding. Emerald Street A fascinating look at American high society in the Sixties and Seventies, and a portrait of a talented writer who couldn’t resist gossip, even if meant ruining his life Stylist

Irony heaps on irony: Capote’s most famous book In Cold Blood, published in 1966, is also a fictionalised reportage of real events, shaped into a novel, itself a narrative of a seemingly psychopathic, absolutely cold-blooded murder in 1959 of the four members – mother, father, two children – of a Kansas farming family. With his friend Harper Lee, Capote spent years meeting investigators, the community and the murderers themselves. He saw the trajectory of the crime through to the end, witnessing the execution by hanging of the two convicted murderers, which traumatised him thereafter. After sharing about her journey of writing Swan Song, Kelleigh read some of her own examples of brilliant evocative fiction. There was too much jumping around, too many unnecessary, almost sentimental scenes, and honestly, after the first two or three of the swan's stories, I started mixing them all together, casting Gloria as Marella and Lee as Slim... Scandalous, frenetic, amusing and tragic, this throws open the doors to a privileged world driven by money, sex, power and influence, where stakes are high and, when trust is broken, there’s much to lose. Daily Mail Perfect holiday novel, Swan Song by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott. Truman Capote’s struggle with art and society reimagined Linda Grant, author of THE DARK CIRCLE

Summary

Because that's the other issue at the heart of this: I love the concept of reframing a traditionally male-dominated narrative by using women's voices - it's a concept that's carried through many of my favorite Greek mythology retellings quite soundly - but here it falls flat, because Greenberg-Jephcott never makes a convincing case for why this is a story that need reclaiming. A bunch of high society women have affairs and sail around on yachts and they're betrayed by their close friend but... so what? This books feels like an elaborate revenge fantasy that's so mired in gossip and cattiness that it loses its thematic heft. Jephcott appeared in two episodes of Midsomer Murders as two different characters; "Death's Shadow" and seven years later in 2006, "Four Funerals and a Wedding". As time went on, people started to say that they wanted to see Capote in the novel. Kelleigh went home, didn’t write for a week, and the day she had to submit for the next workshop she wrote a chapter about Truman as a child. Hart, Christopher (20 January 2008). "Love hurts – but why does it feel so good?". The Sunday Times. p.18 . Retrieved 20 April 2019. A dazzling debut about Truman Capote, the literary icon of his age, and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his Swans.