Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott
Swan Song
They told him everything.
He told everyone else.
Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on Yucatán beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.
Based on ten years of research comes a dazzling literary debut about the rise and self-destructive fall of Truman Capote and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his swans.
Claire Nozieres manages the translation rights for Swan Song
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A completely fascinating novel and a marvellously skillful re-imagining of real people, times and places. Outstanding.
William Boyd
What an incredible book! I loved it! Brilliantly written, deeply researched, funny, sharp and moving, this wonderful book marks the debut of a major talent.
Kate Williams
The fascinating story of the beautiful, rich socialites who befriended, confided in and were ultimately betrayed by writer, Truman Capote. Swan Song is a whirlwind tour of private jets to Mexico resorts, playboys’ yachts in the Mediterranean, Manhattan martini lunches and so much scandal. You’ll also spend as much time googling the likes of Babe Paley, Slim Hawks and Lee Radziwill, as you will reading this riveting novel.
Swan Song is a fascinating look at American high society in the Sixties and Seventies, and a portrait of a talented writer who couldn’t resist gossip, even if meant ruining his life.
A whirlwind of a first novel. There is great pathos in the Swans’ woundings and in their inevitable decline. And the character of Truman himself shimmers through the novel in a wonderful blaze of eccentricity and excess. Outstanding.
More 20th century titans shimmy into glamorous being in Swan Song, a dazzlingly assured first novel from Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott... One of this impressive novel’s delicious achievements is the collective voice used as a Greek chorus to convey the wealthy women united against “the androgynous sprite”. This clever book, with the moreish astringency of a negroni, is a perfect summer cocktail.
Scandalous, frenetic, amusing and tragic, this throws open the doors to a privileged world driven by money, sex, power and influence, where stakes are high and, when trust is broken, there’s much to lose.
Triumphant debut… Fuelled by deception, love affairs and secrets, this will keep you pinned to your sun lounger.
Simultaneously fabulous and tragic, Swan Song is an incredibly accomplished debut.
Greenberg-Jephcott gives us a vivid snapshot of this way of life... this novel never flags, and never forgets the duty to entertain.
The Times
Seductive, spellbinding... Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege.
S magazine, Sunday Express
A glamorous, literary, and gloriously gossipy reimagining of the fallout when Truman Capote blew 1970s New York society wide open with lurid, intoxicating exposé of its ruling class. Pure pleasure.
This is a first novel of extraordinary skill, a book of which Capote – even at his best – would have been proud.
The Observer
If a writer is going to craft a novel from well-known events, they might as well do it with brio, which this debut has in spades.
Delicious... one of my top tips for summer 2018
A rich, sharp, sting of a book. It made me laugh and grimace and pity monsters. I'm still smiling about it.
