12-16-2025, 06:45 PM
Truman Capote’s first novel is a story of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South.
At the age of twelve, Joel Knox is summoned to meet the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at the decaying mansion in Skully’s Landing, his father is nowhere in sight. What he finds instead is a sullen stepmother who delights in killing birds; an uncle with the face—and heart—of a debauched child; and a fearsome little girl named Idabel who may offer him the closest thing he has ever known to love.
Quote: Below: The iconic photograph of Truman Capote by Harold Halma used on the cover of Other Voices, Other Rooms in 1948.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Capote looked "as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality."
Gerald Clarke wrote in his 1988 book Capote: A Biography, "The famous photograph: Harold Halma's picture on the dust jacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside. Truman claimed that the camera had caught him off guard, but in fact he had posed himself and was responsible for both the picture and the publicity … [it gave Capote] not only the literary, but also the public personality he had always wanted."