Swan Song

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

‘The new Donna Tartt.’ Vogue

'Brilliantly captures Capote’s acid wit and his dramatic downfall.' The Times, Books of the Year

'A dazzlingly assured first novel... This clever book, with the moreish astringency of a negroni, is a perfect summer cocktail.' Sunday Times

'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
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They told him everything.

He told everyone else.

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.

In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he’d worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable: nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons . . . Words.

A dazzling debut about the line between gossip and slander, self-creation and self-preservation, SWAN SONG is the tragic story of the literary icon of his age and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his Swans.

‘Writers write. And one can’t be surprised if they write what they know.’
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'A completely fascinating novel and a marvellously skilful re-imagining of real people, times and places. Outstanding.' William Boyd

'Scandalous, frenetic, amusing and tragic.' Daily Mail

'Our generation’s The Secret History' Pendora

'Brilliantly written, deeply researched, funny, sharp and moving.' Kate Williams, bestselling author of Josephine