This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote would have been proud' OBSERVER Imagine their horror when they realise, that although their names have been changed, this story is all about them and is revealing their deepest secrets. Because that's the other issue at the heart of this: I love the concept of reframing a traditionally male-dominated narrative by using women's voices - it's a concept that's carried through many of my favorite Greek mythology retellings quite soundly - but here it falls flat, because Greenberg-Jephcott never makes a convincing case for why this is a story that need reclaiming. A bunch of high society women have affairs and sail around on yachts and they're betrayed by their close friend but... so what? This books feels like an elaborate revenge fantasy that's so mired in gossip and cattiness that it loses its thematic heft. The Swans in the novel are I think based on real-life characters, but exactly who I didn't get. As another character says:

There was too much jumping around, too many unnecessary, almost sentimental scenes, and honestly, after the first two or three of the swan's stories, I started mixing them all together, casting Gloria as Marella and Lee as Slim... This novel is based on a fascinating real-life story, but I was bored out of my mind reading it: After spending years with the rich and the famous, writer Truman Capote published a text called "La Côte Basque 1965" in an issue of Esquire magazine in 1975, which was intended to be part of his new novel "Answered Prayers" (the unfinished book was then published posthumously in 1986). In it, Capote spills the secrets of some of his high society friends, their thinly veiled identities easy to decipher for contemporary readers. As a consequence, Capote lost many of his closest female friends, socialites who felt like he sold them out for personal gain, while he argued that, well, he's a writer, so he writes. Theirs was a shimmering set, dressed in Dior, heading to Europe on yachts and private jets, lunching in the best restaurants and sharing secrets with Capote, whose Southern cadences seduced them into telling stories they shouldn’t.Tom Stoppard (4 April 2013). Indian Ink. Faber & Faber. pp.6–. ISBN 978-0-571-30081-5 . Retrieved 14 April 2019. But if the intention of the author was to give the Swans their voice, all she does is succeed in portraying them as shallow, narcissistic, disloyal, self-obsessed, needy and obnoxious. Shed skin of a missing corpse"? Add that to someone who "resumed his ingestion" rather than carrying on eating, or someone else who "removes the offending appendage" instead of taking someone’s arm away from around a woman’s waist, and you perhaps get the idea of what I found too much. I don’t know - maybe you like those bits. A completely fascinating novel and a marvellously skillful re-imagining of real people, times and places. Outstanding." -- William Boyd

And it was a pampered, self-obsessed life, but Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege. Cochran, Peter (2014). Small-Screen Shakespeare. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p.289. ISBN 9781443869690 . Retrieved 21 April 2019.A] seductive spellbinding debut... Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege S Magazine, Sunday Express

She deftly gives us an insight into their inner lives... while creating defined personalities that resonate and intrigue. Lyrical and fascinating, the fact that this is Greenberg-Jephcott's debut is astounding. Emerald Street 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 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.And it is this later point that lead to the incident which is the central focus of the book a set out here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truma... ,the publication in Esquire of “La Côte Basque 1965", the beginning of the novel “Answered Prayers”, an undertaking which is seen by Capote in this novel as doing for 1960-1970s American society what Proust did for earlier 20th Century France: but by the swans as a gross betrayal: their ire perhaps being greater due to their sudden horror at their own naivety in trusting a writer who invented the genre of nonfiction novel. his is a production of the play As You Like It (by William Shakespeare) by Royal Shakespeare Company, 6th September 1977 (press night), at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon". Theatricalia. Theatricalia. This book had me wanting to know more about Truman and I found myself Googling him and watching interviews he did on chat shows. For me that is a sign of a good book as you got under my skin and I wanted to know more!! She was renowned as an award-winning novelist, poet and children’s author, as well as short story writer, and this posthumous collection of tales offers another reminder of what a great writer we have lost. I am in two minds about this book: while I thought there were moments of brilliance, overall I found it indulgent, tedious, and way too long. Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcotts sets out to retell Truman Capote’s final years from the perspectives of his ‘Swans’, high society ladies he first befriended and then betrayed.