A Christmas Memory
£8.99
Looking back on childhood Christmases on his relatives’ sprawling Alabama farm, Buddy records his unlikely friendship with his beloved maiden ‘aunt’, Sook: foraging for pecans to bake into fruitcakes and greenery to decorate the house; rising before dawn to prepare feasts for a ragged assembly of family, farmhands and neighbours; making kites – too broke to buy gifts – to fly beneath crisp winter skies. And he remembers how it was fair-minded, kind-natured Sook who comforted him when harsh realities – luckless parents, cruel classmates and the injustice of the adult world – intruded on this simple existence. With her irrepressible sense of wonder and fun, Sook taught him the true meaning of good will.
Tender and bittersweet, these stories by Truman Capote, the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
are a captivating tribute to the Christmas season
‘We set about choosing a tree. “It should be,” muses my friend, “twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can’t steal the star.”‘
Selected from across Truman Capote’s writing life, these Christmas stories range from nostalgic, semi-autobiographical portraits of childhood to more unsettling tales of darkness beneath the festive glitter. In the Deep South of Capote’s youth, a young boy, Buddy, and his beloved maiden ‘aunt’ Sook forage for pecans and whiskey to bake into fruitcakes, make kites – too broke to buy gifts – and rise before dawn to prepare feasts for a ragged assembly of guests; while in other stories, a lonely woman has a troubling encounter in wintry New York and an unlikely festive miracle, of sorts, occurs at a local drugstore.
Brimming with feeling, these sparkling tales convey both the wonder and the chill of Christmas time.
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