Lockdown 2020 Reviews: April - Books

Books

Music for Chameleons (1980) – Truman Capote

A wonderful collection of short stories by Truman Capote (author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s). I first came across this text when it was mentioned by one of the characters in Pedro Amoldovar’s film Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother), which I first discovered in a subject on European cinema at the University of Melbourne.

I found the film to be so exceptionally good that I trusted that its intertextual reference to Music for Chameleons was a lead worth pursuing, so I read it and it was. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Anyway, well after I had weaved the text into my essay for the subject and submitted it, I found myself continuing to borrow the book regularly from Baillieu Library for the rest of my degree.

Since graduating I have been gifted my own copy, which I value immensely. My favourite stories are “Music for Chameleons” and “A Lamp in the Window”, as well as the preface.