A Christmas Memory

Together in one festive, keepsake volume, here are the three holiday stories that Truman Capote regarded as among his greatest works of short fiction.

"A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor" were inspired by Capote's early years with a family of distant relatives in rural Alabama. These two childhood tales pay loving tribute to an eccentric old-maid cousin, Miss Sook Faulk, who became Capote's best friend. In "A Christmas Memory," Miss Sook, Buddy (the narrator), and their dog, Queenie, celebrate the yuletide in a hilariously tipsy state. In the poignant reminiscence "One Christmas," six-year-old Buddy journeys to New Orleans for a reunion with his estranged father that shatters many illusions. And in "The Thanksgiving Visitor," Miss Sook invites an unexpected guest to the holiday meal: the school bully, Odd Henderson, whom Buddy calls "the meanest human creature in my experience."

Distinguished by Capote's delicate interplay of childhood sensibility and recollective vision, these three classics are gems that celebrate the unique bonds of friends and family.

Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 11/12/1996
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.52h x 4.87w x 0.61d
ISBN: 9780679602378

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.7
Point Value: 1
Interest Level: Lower Grade
Quiz #/Name: 44937 / Christmas Memory

About the Author
TRUMAN CAPOTE was born in 1924 and died in 1984. Based on his own boyhood in rural Alabama in the 1930s, A Christmas Memory was orginally published in Mademoiselle in 1956 and later was included in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

BETH PECK, a designer and illustrator of many children's books, fell in love with the writing of Truman Capote and counts her paintings for A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor, also by Capote, among the work that is closest to her heart.