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Prepublication, Swan Song was the winner of the Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman Andrews Award for a first novel, was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award, the Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize.
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Kelleigh lives between Los Angeles and London. She earned a BFA (Directing) from Carnegie Mellon University, studied screenwriting at the University of Southern California, and has been honoured by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a Finalist for the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, among numerous screenwriting accolades. She was awarded the Abroad Fellowship in Provence in 2006, where the germ of an idea for a novel about Truman Capote’s betrayal of his inner circle was born. After a decade of research, Kelleigh began Swan Song, her debut novel, in the UEA/ Guardian Masterclass, completing it four years later on the UEA Prose Fiction MA, from which she graduated with Distinction.
A rich, sharp, sting of a book. It made me laugh and grimace and pity monsters. I'm still smiling about it Stu Turton, bestselling author of THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE The Swans moved in a kind of ritualised boredom, leavened only, it seems, by personal chit-chat, a flat-line circuit in the deadly monotony of the idle rich. They had become dependent on Capote’s eagerness to listen, to inject vitality and life and interest into their doings. He filled, our author suggests, the gaping holes in their lives, discovering them to be remarkable. All literature, Capote suggests in Swan Song is gossip. The Swans with their stories say there is no Truman without us, but know equally there is no us without Truman. They have six-hour lunches, they meet on yachts in the Mediterranean, in villas and palaces, on beaches and at resorts, and of course in New York and its surrounding estates and gardens. They are photographed and quoted, in the age before the internet and social media, gobbled up in the glossies and the gossip columns.
The Swans in the novel are I think based on real-life characters, but exactly who I didn't get. As another character says: I’ll start with what I did like. The book paints a portrait of a man from lonely beginnings, who seeks validation through his work, and his association with the rich and famous. There is tragic irony in the fact that his own thirst for attention causes him to betray the very people who give him companionship, threatening to leave him more alone than ever as he slips into a fugue of addiction and lies. The use of narrative voice is also interesting, the ‘swans’ narrating the story as a collective ‘we’. The women were instantly recognisable in the extracts of Answered Prayers that appeared in Esquire magazine (though Capote never completed the book).
Summary
She was renowned as an award-winning novelist, poet and children’s author, as well as short story writer, and this posthumous collection of tales offers another reminder of what a great writer we have lost. This is part a fictional biography and part the biography of a work, in progress for over twenty years; “Answered Prayers.” Capote befriended the rich and famous and delighted in their company and their confidences. Even as a child, Capote is shown as always watching, listening and absorbing the conversations of the adults around him. His closest childhood friend, the ‘to be famous in the future,’ Nellie Harper Lee, may have been able to warn his future Swans, after Truman inserted her mother’s vicious gossip into a short story, which caused a minor, local furore, long before “Answered Prayers,” was thought of.
I am in two minds about this book: while I thought there were moments of brilliance, overall I found it indulgent, tedious, and way too long. Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcotts sets out to retell Truman Capote’s final years from the perspectives of his ‘Swans’, high society ladies he first befriended and then betrayed. The prose in general feels convoluted and overdone. It’s as though the author is trying hard to elevate the impact and merit of the content beyond its worth; unnecessary and melodramatic metaphors abound. Swan Song is the story of Truman Capote's unfinished novel Answered Prayers and how it cost him his social status and friends. Kelleight Greenberg-Jephcott spent 10 years researching Swan Song and I'm afraid this made it difficult for her to let go of the many pieces of information she must have accumulated during that time.The Story of Truman Capote famous for being an American writer who wrote “Breakfast At Tiffany’s and “ Cold Blood” A completely fascinating novel and a marvellously skillful re-imagining of real people, times and places. Outstanding." -- William Boyd Answered Prayers,” was, basically, the betrayal of the confidences that Capote gathered during his years as, ‘confessor, confidante, consigliore,’ to the socialites, society hostesses, tycoon’s wives and other wealthy women, who became known as his ‘Swans.’ When a chapter of his, long anticipated book, was published in, ”Esquire,” magazine, his beloved confidantes reacted badly to having their secrets, and barely disguised identities, available for everyone to read; resulting in Capote’s gradual decline.
If a writer is going to craft a novel from well-known events, they might as well do it with brio, which this has in spades... A skilled and sparking debut" -- Suzi Feay * Guardian * And it was a pampered, self-obsessed life, but Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege. A] seductive spellbinding debut... Greenberg-Jephcott beautifully captures the pain and poignancy alongside the privilege S Magazine, Sunday Express HOOKS, BARBARA (18 November 2004). "CRITIC'S VIEW – FRIDAY". The Age. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. p.18, Green Guide . Retrieved 20 April 2019.
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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.' ROSE TREMAIN
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