As in most Capote novels, locales are described in minute physical detail. These descriptions are impressionistic; they define the essential nature of the place itself and Joel's emotions as he observes his surroundings. For example, shortly after he arrives at Skully's Landing, Joel looks out the window at the garden, which to him reflects the loneliness and despair he sees in the household: "Below, under a fiery surface of sum waves, a garden, a jumbled wreckage of zebrawood and lilac, elephant-ear plant and weeping willow, the lace-leafed limp branches shimmering delicately, and dwarfed cherry trees, like those in oriental prints, sprawled raw and green in the noon heat. It was not a result of simple neglect, this tangled oblong area, but rather the outcome, it appeared, of someone having, in a riotous moment, scat tered about it a wild assortment of seed."

In this blend of customary Southern...