Of an exhibition of D. H. Lawrence's paintings, largely nudes, Rebecca West once noted: "Mr. Lawrence has very pink friends." In "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Mr. Capote has very lost friends or, more accurately, one very lost friend, Miss Holiday Golightly, who is surrounded by as false-hearted a clutch of drab witches and cut-rate warlocks as ever picked one another's bones at the Stork Club….

[Her compressed saga] is remindful around the edges of Djuna Barnes's "Nightwood," and raises a few French horn echoes of Iris March, Lady Brett Ashley, and the heroine of John O'Hara's "Butterfield 8" as well. But they are echoes of subject only; Capote's handling of scene, dialogue, illumination of character, near-caricature which rises to revelation, his eye for comedy both social and joyously antisocial; above all, his sympathy for Holly, which can deepen to controlled eloquence, make this short novel his own; and a fine...