To most, Truman Capote’s name is synonymous with an elite lifestyle – part of the upper echelons of New York society, host to the iconic “Black and White Ball” at the Plaza Hotel, and with important social connections to anyone who was considered someone.  

When it comes to his writing, one of his most celebrated works was the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), turned into a film starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. 

A few years later, the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood (1966), detailing the four gruesome murders of a family in a small farming community in Kansas, made him internationally famous. 

A Christmas Memory is something else. In this brief collection of novels, first published in Mademoiselle magazine in 1956, Capote outlined his childhood memories of real-life Sook, a distant and eccentric cousin in her 60s who was young Capote’s only friend. 

They lived together in a large house in the Alabama countryside, where he had been left by his parents, who had wanted to focus on their own lives without the nuisance of having to take care of a child. 

The Christmas preparations are viewed through the eyes of a child, and so is Sook, who also seems to have the mind of a child, though combined with the insights and generosity only old age and maturity can provide. 

The manuscript was originally penciled by hand, in two thin brown notebooks, almost without any editing, as though the story was just waiting to come out. 

Capote was only 32 at the time of publishing, and had only published one novel (Other Voices, Other Rooms) before. All of his fame and fortune (and, as it would turn out, misfortune) lay before him. 

The five stories in the book all circle around the large house, its warm kitchen, the loyal dog and his best friend Sook. 

Often melancholic and bittersweet, there is not only tenderness but also a clear sense of love in the way many of the characters and places are portrayed, as Capote reminisced about his childhood and the people he grew up with, forever lost to the forces of time.