The Next Best Book Club discussion

Happy December!! Tis the season and all of that! Welcome our December group read and the discussion leader... Book Concierge!!!

This is one of my favorite books and I re-read it every year on my birthday.

One thing I love about it is that Capote's writing is so vivid ... sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. All the reader's senses are involved in the experience.

What passage did you find memorable?

Read this in 2009 (though I could swear it was more recent than that!) and enjoyed it. I used it for a Teaser Tuesday blog post with the following passage:

And when all around us we see people who can't satisfy the plainest needs, I feel ashamed. Oh, not of myself, because who am I, an old nobody who never owned a mite; if I hadn't had a family to pay my way, I'd have starved or been sent to the County Home. The shame I feel is for all of us who have anything extra when other people have nothing.

Sook to Buddy
"The Thanksgiving Visitor" from
A Christmas Memory including One Christmas and A Thanksgiving Memory

Oh, great - didn't realize till just now this group was doing this book. It so happens Toronto Public Library - High Park group, is doing this next Wednesday night.

Has anybody figured out exactly who Sook is? A cousin? An orphan? I got the impression she's actually an adult with a child's mind.

A funny thing happened with me - the other day I was in the library and told one of the librarians I didn't want to read it - said 'I don't feel like any soap opera about Christmas'. Now, here I am just loving it.

The book the library's online club is doing is Stephen Leacock's 'Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town (Little Town)'. I didn't think I was going to like that one either. Ha ha ... polished it off in one day, then immediately downloaded another Leacock - Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich.

So I've got enough to keep me busy this week.

"You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'11 wager it never happens. I'11 wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

While I am not a religious person, this was my favourite passage. Finding beauty in everyday life, appreciating your loved ones and being grateful for what you have no matter how little that may be. This was how this passage read to me and I feel it embodies the Christmas spirit.

Carly wrote: "Has anybody figured out exactly who Sook is? A cousin? An orphan? I got the impression she's actually an adult with a child's mind."

Hey Carly, at the beginning of the story it says that she is his cousin and a much older one at that. While the story never directly says if she was an adult with a child's mind that was the impression that I received as well.

Carly wrote: "Has anybody figured out exactly who Sook is? A cousin? An orphan? I got the impression she's actually an adult with a child's mind."

This is the edition I have at home and it includes a cover photo of the young Truman Capote and his Cousin Sook


There was a made-for-TV movie special back in the 1960s I think. It starred Geraldine Page as Miss Sook.

Dani wrote: ""You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. ..."

Dani ... it is my favorite as well.

Carly wrote: "Has anybody figured out exactly who Sook is? A cousin? An orphan? I got the impression she's actually an adult with a child's mind."

I think I found it Carly. According to what I've found through Google, Miss Sook Faulk is based directly on Truman's older cousin, Nanny Rumbley Faulk, whom Truman called "Sook".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Than...
http://capoteweb.com/truman-capote-wi...

I'm having trouble finding any exact information on her though. It does mention in the above Wikipedia article in another story in which she was mentioned in, that she didn't find Capote's depiction of his childhood very accurate in that story.

Buddy and Miss Sook are such well-drawn characters. But there are several minor characters in the book who play a significant role.

Which minor character caught your attention?

Dani wrote: "I'm having trouble finding any exact information on her though. It does mention in the above Wikipedia article in another story in which she was mentioned in, that she didn't find Capote's depiction of his childhood very accurate in that story. ..."

Actually, it wasn't Miss Sook who was quoted in the article but another aunt of Truman's. His family (i.e. his parents) WERE well-off, but didn't really want to have him with them. He was passed around from family member to family member. There may have been sufficient money in the house, but not necessarily sufficient love of this "different" child.

Book Concierge wrote: "Buddy and Miss Sook are such well-drawn characters. But there are several minor characters in the book who play a significant role.

Which minor character caught your attention?"

Mr. Haha Jones. The rough looking whiskey seller that goes all soft when Sook says that the whiskey is for a fruitcake and extends the kindness of providing the whiskey for free in exchange for a fruitcake. That really made me smile.

Book Concierge wrote: "Dani wrote: "I'm having trouble finding any exact information on her though. It does mention in the above Wikipedia article in another story in which she was mentioned in, that she didn't find Capo..."

Thanks for clarifying :)

Book Concierge wrote: "Buddy and Miss Sook are such well-drawn characters. But there are several minor characters in the book who play a significant role.

Which minor character caught your attention?"

I also loved Queenie!

In The Thanksgiving Visitor Capote explains that Miss Sook childhood was of kind of "reclusion" due her health problems. She never went to school, or have any other social activity out of the house. She actually prefers to stay in the kitchen most of the Thanksgiving dinner, even the visitors were all her relatives.

Though I wouldn't say Truman Capote is a great writer, I liked A Christmas Memory Book and CD. I enjoyed the sincere way he express his love for his best friend Miss Sook, and how he felt her love too.