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Breakfast at Tiffany's

Cover art for paperback edition.
Author	Truman Capote
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novella
Publisher	Penguin Group
Publication date	1958
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback) & e-book, audio-CD
Pages	192 pp (Paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-679-74565-3 (Paperback edition)

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958.

The story portrays the life of Holly Golightly, a young woman transplanted to Manhattan with an unknown past. She is trying to find her place in the world when she meets her neighbor, an unnamed, unemployed writer. The novella is set in Manhattan's Upper East Side during the 1940's. It follows the young writer's affections for the strange but charming Holly.

The book opens with the narrator and a local bartender, Joe, talking about a package Joe had recently received. Joe was interested in ice hockey and a few serials, but the thing that drew him together with the narrator was their mutual, platonic interest in one Holly Golightly. Recently, he'd been sent a picture by another mutual admirer (and former neighbor) of Ms. Golightly (one fashion photographer, Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi) of an African man holding a statue, resembling her. Mr. Yunioshi, coming across the statue while working in Africa, tried to buy it from the man, who was reluctant to let it go. Eventually, the story of how the statue came to be was told--a young beautiful woman traveling in Africa with two male companions had stayed with him, leading Mr. Yunioshi to believe it could have been none other than Holly.

The rest of the story takes place as a flashback as the narrator recalls the year 1943 and his friendship with Holly. A new resident in the Upper East Side apartment building where Holly has resided nearly a year, the narrator is first tipped off to the "party-girl's" presence by her habit of ringing Mr. Yunioshi's bell to let her in at odd hours of the night, as she never bothered to carry a key herself (rationalizing she would only lose it). She eventually moves on to ringing the narrator's bell, which he recounts as a habit that, oddly enough, only endears Ms. Golightly to him, although at this point they have not quite met. The first real encounter between Holly and the narrator comes in the middle of the night, as she is trying to escape a violent, drunken date's advances, and climbs the fire escape outside her bathroom window, into the narrator's apartment above. The two talk into the morning but do not become truly close friends until months later. Holly and the narrator have a series of fallings out throughout the novella, but they ultimately remain close. At this first meeting, Holly names the narrator "Fred" (his real name is never revealed) after her brother, for whom she cares greatly, and who is enlisted overseas. This establishes her relationship with the narrator as close but ultimately fraternal rather than romantic. Throughout the novel, Holly is reluctant to reveal her own background and history, until her past finds itself on her doorstep--literally--when her husband, a significantly older man, comes looking for her from Tulip, Texas. It is revealed that Holly and her brother Fred were runaway orphans, when this man, the widowed Doc Golightly and his several children, kindly took them in. Doc eventually asks the 14-year-old "Lulamae Barnes" to be his wife, and she apparently agreed, becoming his child bride. Seeking more from life, perhaps influenced by the magazines she used to receive, Lulamae ran away from this life to Hollywood, where a brief attempt by an agent to get her a film career leads her to run away, this time to New York City.

In New York, the sexually liberated, and now very cosmopolitan, 19-year old Holly's "occupation" consists largely of socializing with wealthy and famous men, living off the "powder-room change" and taxi-fare the "non-rat" men would give her (making the claim that any decent man would give at least $50 for either). But essentially, Holly is looking for a wealthy man to marry, and nearly does marry one Rusty Trawler, until her competitor, and one-time roommate, thwarts this plan. She begins dating an up-and-coming Brazilian politician (Jose), an uptight but kind man, who does not quite know what to make of Holly, and who was previously involved with the former roommate. The mismatch between the two is most evident when Holly receives notice that her brother has died overseas, and proceeds to ransack her own apartment in a violent fit of grief. The subdued Jose, after fetching the doctor and help from the narrator, can seemingly do nothing but ask the doctor whether it is truly just grief ailing Holly.

Holly resigns herself to the fact that she will marry the politician, Jose, whose baby she is carrying, and will move with him to Brazil. She invites the narrator for a horseback ride in Central Park in order to say "goodbye," but during their ride, the narrator's horse bolts and Holly chases after. As a result of the horseriding accident, Holly loses the baby.

Holly's second source of income is the $100 a week she receives to visit the mobster, Sally Tomato, in prison delivering coded messages which Holly later naively claims she was not aware were such. The Sing Sing prison visits eventually catch up with her, landing her in jail, and destroying her chances of moving to Brazil with Jose. She is released from jail pending criminal charges for her involvement with the mobster, when she decides to flee prosecution by flying to Brazil (why waste a perfectly good plane ticket, being her logic). On a rainy afternoon she packs up her belongings, abandons her stray cat in Spanish Harlem (the only living being she painfully admits belongs to her and her to it) and ultimately manages to leave the country, where she is heard from again only once by the narrator. In all other respects what happens to Holly remains as mystery is that there is no definite resolution as to where she ends up.

The title of the novel is drawn from Holly's affection for the jewelry store Tiffany's, where she believes nothing bad could ever take place.

Main article: Breakfast at Tiffany's (film)

In 1961, the novella was adapted into a major film by the same name starring Audrey Hepburn and directed by Blake Edwards. The movie is set in contemporary times (i.e., in the year it was made) and not in the 1940s. The movie is based on the novella but significant changes were introduced, to the point that each may be said to include themes, nuances and even characters unique to itself. The novella and the movie, both parts of popular American culture, are best handled as separate entities: fans of the film who read the novella encounter a different Holly Golightly from the one famously portrayed by Audrey Hepburn.^{[citation needed]} Capote did not approve of the changes, which he said were largely made to remove controversial elements and appeal to a broader audience. Capote also didn't like who the studio cast as Holly Golightly: he said he preferred Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn.

The film differs from the novella in many ways; the two largest differences are the extent of Holly's sexual liberation and the ending of the story. In 1961, the movie studio couldn't reveal that Holly slept with and lived with several men at various points in the novella, although they could say that Paul, or Fred as Holly calls him, is "kept" by a married woman (a character created entirely for the movie). The book discreetly mentions Holly being pregnant as a result of her relationship with Jose, the aforementioned Brazilian diplomat, but the movie leaves this out altogether - preferring not to allude to any kind of sexual relationship having taken place. At the movie's conclusion, after Holly learns in the taxi that her Brazilian fiance has jilted her, she forces her cat out of the cab and says that she is still going to Brazil. Paul leaves her in the taxi. She ultimately runs out into the rain and finds her cat with Paul and they kiss. In the novella, although the unnamed Paul claims to be in love with Holly, it appears to be a largely platonic and unrequited love, and he has no choice but to let her go to Brazil. Holly lets the cat go, goes to Brazil, and is never heard from again.

• List of novellas

• GradeSaver study guide on Breakfast at Tiffany's