By Henri Robillot
I read this in the morning of March 20th, 2024. I borrowed the book from the town library because I’d always wanted to watch the film, and I thought I should get something to compare it to. Despite that, stills of Audrey Hepburn in her classic costume kept coming to my mind’s eye as I read.
It’s a lovely story! Holly really is, as the blurb suggested, one of the shining flowers of American fiction. She’s written to be enthralling, and the focus on her eyes is such that at points I had a letterbox-style image in my head, of the whorls of mixing colours, “glittering like a shattered prism”.
It’s also, as I realised, difficult to read such old fiction - slurs on every single page, and there’s a passage where Holly expresses support for being queer, which I think was included to present her as kooky, and having opinions no sane person would have which is unfortunate.
But glossing over that (if possible), it really is a lovely story, and Holly is a character written so well in the clear, swift strokes of a universal symbol that she becomes one. The shape of her character is bare and clear, and yet also richly defined. She’ll come to mind very often.