Swan Song: Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019

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Truman considered himself to have had an unloved and harsh childhood which he used as a trade to entice others into revealing their hidden secrets. Mixed with his engaging and alluring language he bewitched many people, particularly the wives, whom he called his Swans, into believing he was their confidante. With wine and words, he seduced them into divulging all. Author: Kent-based freelance conference producer Laura Marshall is a recent graduate of Curtis Brown Creative three month writing course. Friend Request was the runner up for The Bath Novel Award 2016and was also shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016.

In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he’d worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable: nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons . . . Words. Jephcott appeared in two episodes of Midsomer Murders as two different characters; "Death's Shadow" and seven years later in 2006, "Four Funerals and a Wedding".A dazzling debut about Truman Capote, the literary icon of his age, and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his Swans. The women were instantly recognisable in the extracts of Answered Prayers that appeared in Esquire magazine (though Capote never completed the book). Cults hold morbid fascination – none more so than the Manson “family”. Cline focuses on its female followers, as idealised through the eyes of 14-year old Evie Boyd. When Evie spots them in a Petaluma park in the summer of 1969, she is mesmerised: “The day was disturbed by the path the girls cut across the regular world. Sleek and thoughtless as sharks breaching the water.” She’s drawn ever deeper into the group, led by the charismatic, Manson-esque “Russell”. Here is the clique as elective family. Benedict, David (21 January 2008). "SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE". Variety. 409 (9): 42 . Retrieved 20 April 2019. Swan Song is a deft, dazzling, diligently researched creation, in which the lives of various members of elite, powerful, old-moneyed families, such as the Roosevelts, Kennedys, Bouviers and Churchills, are verbally dissected over Martini-drenched lunches. Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott spent ten years researching this novel, which was named winner of the 2015 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel, in addition to being shortlisted for the 2015 Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition and the 2015/16 Historical Novel Society New Novel Award. I hope we won't have to wait so long for her next book.

His swans immediately ostracised him – “the imp had turned twisted goblin, with a dark shade around him” – as drugs, drink and regret tarnished the end of his life. Hannah forms a friendship with a nonagenarian former actress although she doesn’t discover the truth about her until it’s too late.A stunning debut novel that seamlessly blends history, fact and fiction in this imaginative re-telling of the life of novelist Truman Capote Woman's Weekly A sparkling debut vividly captures the high society women who punished Capote for his indiscreet reporting" * The Guardian * 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 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.

I have to admit that prior to reading Swan Song, I knew almost nothing about Truman Capote; I had, of course, heard of his two most famous books, his much-loved novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and his non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. And thus it was that for me, Swan Song was not only a riveting read, but it too was an informative insight into one of the twentieth century’s most renowned literary darlings. The writer became hugely famous after the publication of In Cold Blood in 1966, about the murder of a Kansas family in their home. 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 TremainThe Swans in the novel are I think based on real-life characters, but exactly who I didn't get. As another character says: Since reading the totally, totally beautiful Swan Song, I have two new hobbies. Googling photos of Barbara Paley and watching videos of the Camel Walk. Dolly Alderton The author writes a historical piece of fiction based on the life of Truman Capote, writer of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. It is a blend of fact and fiction, and echoes the style and concept of In Cold Blood. Capote had a difficult childhood that he deeply resented, only to leave it far behind as he comes to gain entry to the circles of the powerful, wealthy and famous, admitted to their close inner circles, privy to their deepest secrets. The author drops a litany of famous names and families from the era, outlining their glamorous lives in numerous global locations. Capote collected a bevy of privileged women who adore him, indulging in the latest gossip, whilst deploying a cutting wit. They are his Swans, indulged and indulgent, relationships built up over decades, sources of artistic inspiration and influence. So why would he throw it all away by betraying them in the planned Answered Prayers, a literary gossip read, covered in Esquire magazine, exposing their secrets for all to gawp over and feed on?

As well as Capote the real focus of this book (and sometime first party plural narrators) are his Swans: an inner circle of six privileged, glamorous women for whom he served as: firstly one of their trophies, adding literary genius to their collections of art, jewellery and famous friends; as an empathetic and alway flattering confidant to whom they confided both their juiciest gossip and their innermost secrets. A completely fascinating novel and a marvellously skillful re-imagining of real people, times and places. Outstanding. William BoydHannah’s mother, Elizabeth, left when Hannah was small and the father and daughter never mention her. As time went on, people started to say that they wanted to see Capote in the novel. Kelleigh went home, didn’t write for a week, and the day she had to submit for the next workshop she wrote a chapter about Truman as a child. 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. The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.”