There’s also just no need for it to be so long. The book is stuffed with tangents that offer no depth or development, other than to repeatedly show us how vain, shallow, cruel, and catty most of these people are. Yes, the women’s obsession with image and reputation is almost certainly down to harsh societal pressures, but I didn’t find any of them sympathetic or compelling enough to care. And whilst the shared narrative voice did indeed throw up lots of potential, it ultimately resulted in a blending together of the women. They all descended into an exhausting mass of white privilege, from which individuals were hard to discern.

A vastly different vision of the male teenage clique, this is a dystopian nightmare of young men linked by brutality. Alex and his gang of “droogs” imbibe drug-laced “Knifey Moloko”, preparing for a night of sociopathic violence. They rob, rape and kill in a series of horrific crimes. There’s a hierarchy within the group, which gives way to tensions, in-fighting and challenges for dominance. Alex is betrayed, leading to his incarceration and “aversion therapy”. The clique is defined by callous detachment, desire for power and violence-as-pornography. It raises chilling questions about gang mentality and free will. After sharing about her journey of writing Swan Song, Kelleigh read some of her own examples of brilliant evocative fiction.The Story of Truman Capote famous for being an American writer who wrote “Breakfast At Tiffany’s and “ Cold Blood” While Swan Song started out promising with its at times dream-like narrative and the chorus of swans sometimes narrating the story in first person plural, sometimes speaking to Capote directly, it drew out too long. Prepublication, Swan Song was the winner of the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a first novel, was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award, the Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Author: Hailing from the Georgian city of Lichfield, Stokes-Chapman is a graduate of Aberystwyth University’s MA in Creative Writing. Pandorawas shortlisted for the 2020 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and longlisted for the 2020 Bath Novel Award. If a writer is going to craft a novel from well-known events, they might as well do it with brio, which this has in spades... A skilled and sparking debut" -- Suzi Feay * Guardian *

While true that Proust's novel did include barely disguised portraits of real society figures, his reputation as perhaps the finest writer of the first half of the 20th Century rests not on that but on the quality of his prose. Similarly, with a very different but unique style of his own, Thomas Bernhard, the most important writer of the 2nd half of the century - his The Woodcutters even the subject of a lawsuit. Swan Song is the story of Truman Capote's unfinished novel Answered Prayers and how it cost him his social status and friends. Kelleight Greenberg-Jephcott spent 10 years researching Swan Song and I'm afraid this made it difficult for her to let go of the many pieces of information she must have accumulated during that time. 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 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.

Hannah’s mother, Elizabeth, left when Hannah was small and the father and daughter never mention her. Premise:Truman Capote, having reached the pinnacle of literary success after In Cold Blood’s wild acclaim, decides to drop a “literary grenade” in 1975 that will transformhim from society’s darling to persona non grataby betraying the confidences of his inner circle, mid-20th century society’s wealthy and powerful elite – the women he called his ‘Swans’ and collective narrators of Swan Song. This is a world of celebrity, of rich and privileged people who live superficial, meaningless, empty and sad lives. And it is not a world that I enjoyed spending any time in. It also seems to describe a very old story. a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Dominic Jephcott". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 14 April 2019 . Retrieved 14 April 2019.