or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
Sell Back Your Copy
For a $2.06 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Other Voices, Other Rooms (Modern Library)
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Other Voices, Other Rooms (Modern Library) [Hardcover]

Truman Capote (Author), John Berendt (Introduction)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)

List Price: $19.95
Price: $13.63 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $6.32 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Only 7 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want it delivered Tuesday, January 31? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Book Description

Modern Library September 21, 2004
Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote’s tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.

This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capote’s emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace.

Frequently Bought Together

Other Voices, Other Rooms (Modern Library) + Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library) + In Cold Blood
Price For All Three: $40.15

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together
  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library) $10.88

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • In Cold Blood $15.64

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details



Editorial Reviews

Review

"Truman Capote is the most perfect writer of my generation."
–NORMAN MAILER

From the Inside Flap

Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully's Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote's tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.

This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capote's emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Modern Library; Modern Library Ed edition (September 21, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679643222
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679643227
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 6.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #407,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was raised in various parts of the south, his family spending winters in New Orleans and summers in Alabama and New Georgia. By the age of fourteen he had already started writing short stories, some of which were published. He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for the New Yorker which provided his first - and last - regular job. Following his spell with the New Yorker, Capote spent two years on a Louisiana farm where he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He lived, at one time or another, in Greece, Italy, Africa and the West Indies, and travelled in Russia and the Orient. He is the author of many highly praised books, including A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1965), which immediately became the centre of a storm of controversy on its publication, Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published by Penguin. Truman Capote died in August 1984.

 

Customer Reviews

54 Reviews
5 star:
 (27)
4 star:
 (17)
3 star:
 (6)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (54 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A moving coming-of-age tale, August 16, 2002
Truman Capote's novel "Other Voices, Other Rooms" opens with the main character, 13-year old Joel Harrison Knox, traveling to the home of his long-estranged father. As the book progresses, Joel becomes more intimately involved with the people of his father's household and of the larger community; there is a stress on oral history as Joel learns their stories. Overall, plot struck me as secondary to character revelation.

The people of Joel's new world are colorful, often pathetic, and sometimes grotesque; at times it really feels like Capote is putting on a human freak show for the thrill-seeking reader. He leads us through a world of decaying old buildings and broken spirits. But Capote always respects the essential humanity of his troubled characters.

There is a pronounced theme of alternative sexuality and/or gender identity throughout the book. Capote establishes this theme early on in his description of the main character. Joel is described as not looking like a "'real' boy": "He was too pretty, too delicate and fair-skinned." "Other Voices" thus has a lot to offer readers with an interest in gender issues as they have been explored in American literature. Capote also does an interesting job of portraying a mixed-race household where the African-American servants are as vividly drawn as the Caucasian family members.

Throughout the book there is some richly descriptive language, as well as intriguing representations of American vernacular English. Although at times "Other Voices" seems more an exercise in style than a fully satisfying narrative, it is for me quite a remarkable coming-of-age story.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most beautiful and haunting books ever written., July 30, 1998
By A Customer
This haunting first novel of Truman Capote is a brilliant work. It is a story of youth alienation and coming of age that could be the male companion piece to Carson McCuller's "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter." The story is told in a beautifully lyric style. It follows young Joel after his mother has died when he is sent to live with his father that he has never known. Capote paints a vivid picture of the eccentric family of which Joel finds himself a part. Joel desperately tries to find his way in a world that makes little sense. Capote is a master at making depravity beautiful and haunting without losing the sense of corruption or sugar coating the sadness. He delivers a novel that will forever live with the reader as a voice in the rooms of the soul. It is an exquisitely sad voice but not one that should ever be silenced.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Message Stuffed Into a Bottle, November 28, 2005
By 
Published in January 1948 and Capote's second novel (but the first to reach print), this still engaging work was a sensation and best seller that year and has been in print ever since. Like Capote himself, it's one of a kind. A misfit young boy, Joel Knox, the product of a broken home (as was Capote), travels from New Orleans to the backwater town of Noon City, Mississippi in search of his unknown father. After twelve years of separation, his father has supposedly written to Joel's loving aunt in New Orleans and wants Joel back. But Joel, longing for his father's love, finds himself in the decaying hothouse home of his stepmother, Miss Amy, and his clever and perverse cousin Randolph, their black "maid" Zoo, and Zoo's ancient father Jesus Fever. Joel's father is in the house too, but not in the form he anticipated. Two local girls, Florabel and the wild tomboy Idabel, round out the players and are Joel's allies in a threatening world of perversity, mental instability, and sexual ambiguity. Even though he was just 23 when he finished this work, Capote displays tremendous inventiveness, narrative talent, and over-the-top imagery. A coming-of-age story, this work gushes southern atmosphere and contains, in Capote's own words, "a certain anguished, pleading intensity like the message stuffed in a bottle and thrown into the sea." It also is semi-autobiographical, "an attempt to exorcise demons," although Capote claimed many years later that he was unconscious of this when he wrote it. On another level, this work is also about the elusive search for the father, and the discovery that one is all alone, seeking to feel that "everything is going to be all right." As a post-war novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms" found an audience longing for the same thing, seeking the safety of a benevolent father in a perverse world, and wanting to grow up and find itself.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews











Only search this product's reviews



Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Now a traveler must make his way to Noon City by the best means he can, for there are no buses or trains heading in that direction, though six days a week a truck from the Chuberry Turpentine Company collects mail and supplies in the next-door town of Paradise Chapel: occasionally a person bound for Noon City can catch a ride with the driver of the truck, Sam Radclif. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Miss Amy, Little Sunshine, Jesus Fever, Miss Wisteria, New Orleans, Noon City, Angela Lee, Cloud Hotel, Paradise Chapel, Mister Knox, Mister Randolph, Pepe Alvarez, Sam Radclif, Skully's Landing, Drownin Pond, Miss Roberta, Cousin Randolph, Joel Knox, Mister Sansom, Truman Capote, Keg Brown, Sammy Silverstein, Billy Bob, Idabel Thompkins, Lacey's Princely Place
New!
Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:


What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject