A compelling mix of true crime and literary biography.
How the connection between Truman Capote and a millionaire’s wife brought about their mutual destruction.
Capote took interest in Ann Woodward in 1955 after she shot and killed her husband, Billy Woodward, claiming she thought he was a burglar. When he accosted her in a restaurant a year later, the socialite angrily dismissed him as “a little fag.” Montillo, the author of The Lady and Her Monsters, among other works of nonfiction, suggests that this insult may have been one of the infamously spiteful writer’s motivations for writing "La Côte Basque, 1965,” his infamous 1975 short story. The author's fascination with Woodward and Capote is evident in her elegantly novelistic retelling of their lives and the strange connections and parallels that linked them. “Both had overcome hardscrabble, unsteady, fraught childhoods,” writes Montillo. “Both had cajoled, clawed, and charmed their way into the elite circles they sought to enter. Both were vulnerable and mean. Both were familiar with violence.” The beautiful Woodward had escaped a bleak Kansas life to become a New York showgirl. Capote left Alabama and flourished in New York City, where his brilliance as a writer was quickly recognized. After their initial encounter, Woodward would become an increasingly marginalized figure among the wealthy socialites who had never fully accepted her, while literary bad-boy Capote went on to become the “chronicler of the New York social world that…shunned” her. Capote’s obsession with Woodward only intensified, especially after he found himself unable to produce another book. His 1975 story, based on the lives of Woodward and the high-society women friends he called his "swans,” was so devastating that Woodward committed suicide by overdosing on Seconal, the drug that also killed Capote's mother. In turn, Capote was rejected by his swans for his betrayal of their confidences and sank into the drug and alcohol abuse that eventually led to his death. This engaging, well-researched book will appeal to true-crime aficionados, Capote fans, and anyone interested in a darkly intriguing story well told.
A compelling mix of true crime and literary biography.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982153-75-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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