*The Grass Harp, by Truman Capote 8.0
The Grass Harp, by Truman Capote. 181 pages.The first Capote I have read, The Grass Harp is almost like a children's book but not quite so simple in its themes. The plot, when summarized, sounds almost absurd: a boy named Collin is sent to live with his aunts Verena and Dolly after his parents die. Verena is ridiculously rich and incredibly miserly, Dolly is impossibly shy (she "folded like the petals of shy-lady fern" when people approached), loves nature, and lives in a room where everything is "painted an outlandish pink". In a little backyard cottage lives Catherine Creek, a black woman who is Dolly's best friend. She has no teeth and puts cotton wads in her mouth; Collin and Dolly are the only ones who can understand her when she talks. When Verena threatens to mass-produce Dolly's homemade dropsy medicine (made with a secret recipe given her by gypsies), Dolly, Catherine, and Collin pack some fried chicken and run away to their tree house (which is actually a tree raft, because it has neither roof nor walls. As Collin says, "it was a ship...to sit up there was to sail along the cloudy coastline of every dream.") Verena is incensed, and does everything in her power to make them get down, and along the way the three tree-housers come in contact with a variety of weird and wonderful characters.
VERDICT: 8.0/10.0 A lyrical, often funny book.
(The last paragraph, however, is kind of corny.)
posted by alice @ 11:45 AM
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