"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a valentine of love, fashioned by way of reminiscence, to one Holly Golightly…. This is a very funny portrait of an ex-child wife from some place named Tulip, Tex.—who made several mistakes upon coming to New York….

She is a wild thing searching for something to belong to. (p. 5)

When her pineywoods husband comes to New York and explains the psychological and spiritual basis for her behavior, Holly seems to the reader less feasible.

When Mr. Capote begins to make up a plot involving Holly and one Sally Tomato (a dope peddler serving a term in Sing Sing) he vitiates the up-to-then sharp power of his character. He also plunges his reader into an unbelievable melodrama involving crime, defrocked priests, lost brothers, etc., and asks us to believe psychological motivations compelling Holly that we are not prone to put our faith in very...