The Shards; The House without Windows: Kitchen Confidential; Capote's Women

 

I wish Ellis published books more often. This was magnificent. 

Supposedly autobiographical (it isn't really), Bret is a senior at the Buckley Academy in L.A. in 1981. He and his group of super pretty, super rich, super drugged out all the time friends rule the school. A new student, Robert, joins them. Bret recognizes him from a movie theater almost a year earlier (Bret thought he was good looking, so he remembered him) but Robert denies he's been in L.A. that long. Turns out Robert has some disturbing secrets. But then again, so does L.A.: young women are disappearing, being brutally mutilated and murdered. The press has dubbed the killer the Trawler, and Bret gets it in his head that Robert has something to do with the Trawler. 

Almost no one does unreliable narrator as well as Ellis, and the ending left a lot to interpretation. It was so well told and so creepy. Loved it. 

The story behind "The House without Windows" is actually more interesting than the book itself.

Barbara Newhall Follett was only 9 when she wrote the original manuscript, which ended up being destroyed in a fire. Barbara lovingly rewrote it (it was supposed to be a gift for her mother) from the ages of 10-12. Her father, who was an editor, was so impressed with her prose that he was able to show it off at Alfred Knopf and the book was published to critical acclaim. Barbara became a bestselling author and published another story about her adventures sailing. "The House without Windows" is about a little girl named Eepersip, who leaves home to live in the wild. It was a very sweet love letter to the great outdoors and her descriptions were quite vivid without being over the top.

Now the super interesting part: Barbara vanished at the age of 25, never to be seen again. Her husband failed to report her missing for two weeks, but he was never seriously investigated for her disappearance. Her body was never found. What a sad ending to a promising start, a budding talent in the publishing industry cut tragically short. 

I've read a few biographies about Bourdain over the last few months, and they made me nostalgic for his own kind of storytelling, so I decided to reread "Kitchen Confidential". I read it when it first came out and was blown away by his tales (the bride in the very beginning definitely has sticking power, but so do a lot of his stories). It was just as much fun as I remember it. The world really lost something when he left, far too early. 

And finally, "Capote's Women". I've been trying to read this book for years (off and on) and never getting very far. It's an easy one to put down and move on to something else. It was mostly separate biographies of each of Capote's "swans", the gorgeous New York café set that Truman was able to infiltrate. Everyone wanted Truman as a dinner guest: he was witty and charming and men weren't intimidated by him since he wore his sexuality proudly. 

Capote committed the cardinal sin of exposing his swans' secrets in print in 1975, and was shunned by all except a few who were spared his poison pen. Why he chose to hurt the people who were so good to him for so long is a mystery. I think he thought he was so likeable he could get away with it, that they would forgive him, but he was very mistaken. Truman spiraled in his last years, becoming a drunk and a drug addict, and died in Joanna Carson's spare room. A sad ending for such a promising beginning.