Melanie Benjamin: The Swans of Fifth Avenue, 9780345528704, Bantam Books, (Penguin Random House USA)

 

“The Swans of Fifth Avenue” is a delicious, gossipy read around the famous entourage of Truman Capote, the society women who helped him to his fame and his fall from grace when he published an article called “La Cote Basque” in Esquire Magazine spilling the secrets they had entrusted in him.  I breathed through the 350 pages, dying to get back to the story when I had to set the book aside.  

The most famous of the five women was Babe Paley, wife of the CBS tycoon Bill Paley who was an absolute fashion icon and the It-girl of her days. I had to google her after reading the book;   I needed to visualize what she truly looked like in her famous gowns, a stunning beauty. She became Truman’s closest friend and through her he gained access to all of New York’s richest and most famous members of society.

The five swans were made up of Slim Hawks Hayward Keith, Marella Agnelli, Gloria Guiness and Pamela Churchill Hayward Harriman, all married to rich men or royalty with Babe Paley being the most beautiful whose poise and grace surpassed everyone else’s.  Truman Capote became their confidant and intimate friend, called their “True Heart”, everything their husbands were not.  

Melanie Benjamin does a captivating, fabulous job in fictionalizing their lives, based on factual material, be it Truman’s rise to fame and their relationship with each other, their unimaginable wealth and style of living, often marrying the discarded lover or husband of the other, Truman’s famous black and white ball and his final betrayal in spilling the beans of their secrets in his thinly vailed article in Esquire.  Truman was expelled from their lives after this; he had greatly underestimated their reaction which eventually leads to his downward spiral into drugs and alcoholism.

If you are looking for an entertaining, gossipy read taking you back to the golden age of New York in the Fifties with all the glamour and scandal around Truman Capote up to the Seventies, this is your book!  I dove into this world of glitz, glamour, betrayal and scandal, a delicious tale from start to finish. I also highly recommend the film "Capote" , by chance I had just watched the movie again before picking up the book , starring the incredible Philip Seymour Hoffman.