The Swans of Fifth Avenue
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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Paul Boehmer
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By:
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Melanie Benjamin
About this listen
New York Times best seller
The author of The Aviator's Wife returns with a triumphant new novel about New York's "Swans" of the 1950s - and the scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.
People’s Book of the Week • USA Today’s number-one “New and Noteworthy” Book • Entertainment Weekly’s Must List • LibraryReads Top Ten Pick
Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends - the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a prestigious husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman - a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.
Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive, golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan's elite along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe's powerful circle. Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls "True Heart", Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller - even when the stories aren't his to tell.
Truman's fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he'll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years. The Swans of Fifth Avenue will seduce and startle listeners as it opens the door onto one of America's most sumptuous eras.
Praise for The Swans of Fifth Avenue
“Exceptional storytelling...teeming with scandal, gossip and excitement.” (Harper’s Bazaar)
“This moving fictionalization brings the whole cast of characters back to vivid life. Gossipy and fun, it’s also a nuanced look at the beauty and cruelty of a rarefied, bygone world.” (People)
“The era and the sordid details come back to life in this jewel of a novel.” (O: The Oprah Magazine)
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Critic reviews
"The strange and fascinating relationship between Truman Capote and his 'swans' is wonderfully reimagined in this engrossing novel. It's a credit to Benjamin that we end up caring so much for these women of power, grace, and beauty - and for Capote, too." (Sara Gruen, New York Times best-selling author of Water for Elephants)
"Benjamin convincingly portrays a large cast of colorful historical figures while crafting a compelling, gossipy narrative with rich emotional depth." (Library Journal)
“Shamelessly gossipy...a catty, juicy read that’s like a three-martini lunch.”(USA Today)
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London, 1955: Grace Monroe is a fortunate young woman. Despite her sheltered upbringing in Oxford, her recent marriage has thrust her into the heart of London's most refined and ambitious social circles. Then one evening a letter arrives from France that will change everything. Grace has received an inheritance. There's only one problem: she has never heard of her benefactor, the mysterious Eva d'Orsey. Told by invoking the three distinctive perfumes she inspired, Eva d'Orsey's story weaves through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London.
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Unbearable Narration
- By D McKay on 08-05-15
By: Kathleen Tessaro
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The Secret of the Villa Mimosa
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- Narrated by: Monica Buckley
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A beautiful Jane Doe with no memory of who she is or how she got to the bottom of a treacherous ravine; and a psychiatrist who joins her on her search for her identity. Dr. Phyl Forster was intrigued by the lovely woman who had been recovered from a San Francisco hillside and taken to the hospital where Forster was a resident psychiatrist. When Jane Doe regained consciousness, Dr. Phyl was at her side. It was then she realized that the patient had lost all memory.
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Into the dark side!
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By: Elizabeth Adler
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In Malice, Quite Close
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Story
French ex-pat Tristan Mourault is the wealthy, urbane heir to a world-renowned collection of art - and an insatiable voyeur enamored with Karen Miller, a 15-year-old from a working-class family in San Francisco. Deciding he must 'rescue' Karen from her unhappy circumstances, Tristan kidnaps her and stages her death to mask his true crime.
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In malice,Quite close
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Marjorie Morningstar
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Overall
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Story
Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.
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Great story with really cheesy narration
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By: Herman Wouk
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Christmas at Tiffany's
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- Narrated by: Katie Scarfe
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Overall
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Story
Cassie settled down too young, marrying her first serious boyfriend. Now, 10 years later, she is betrayed and broken. With her marriage in tatters and no career or home of her own, she needs to work out where she belongs in the world and who she really is. So begins a yearlong trial as Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with each of her best friends in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris and London.
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Perfectly Indulgent!
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By: Karen Swan
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The Mayfair Bookshop
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- By: Eliza Knight
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
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Overall
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Performance
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1938: She was one of the six sparkling Mitford sisters, known for her stinging quips, stylish dress, and bright green eyes. But Nancy Mitford’s seemingly dazzling life was really one of turmoil: with a perpetually unfaithful and broke husband, two Nazi sympathizer sisters, and her hopes of motherhood dashed forever. With war imminent, Nancy finds respite by taking a job at the Heywood Hill Bookshop in Mayfair, hoping to make ends meet, and discovers a new life.
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Perfectly Voices, Upliftingly Fun
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By: Eliza Knight
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The Book Club
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Overall
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Discover this moving story of five remarkable friends as Mary Alice Monroe, the New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House, explores the power of friendship with tenderness and honesty.
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Beware: Title Is Deceptive !!
- By Fran Foster on 02-07-16
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Mr. Fox
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Overall
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
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By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Stars over Sunset Boulevard
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Overall
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Performance
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Los Angeles, present day. When an iconic hat worn by Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind ends up in Christine McAllister's vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie.... Los Angeles, 1938. Violet Mayfield sets out to reinvent herself in Hollywood after her dream of becoming a wife and mother falls apart, and she lands a job on the film set of Gone with the Wind.
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Pass on this
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By: Susan Meissner
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Gold Dust
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Overall
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Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?
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It's just not the same without Caroline Lee
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She Regrets Nothing
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Overall
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When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.
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Good Listen
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By: Andrea Dunlop
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Mademoiselle Chanel
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Overall
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Born into rural poverty, Gabrielle Chanel and her siblings are sent to an orphanage after their mother's death. The sisters nurture Gabrielle's exceptional sewing skills, a talent that will propel the willful young woman into a life far removed from the drudgery of her childhood.
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Fiction Not Biography
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Grand Central
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On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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Grand Central: Memories
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Mustique Island
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It’s January 1972 but the sun is white hot when Willy May Michael’s boat first kisses the dock of Mustique Island. Tucked into the southernmost curve of the Caribbean, Mustique is a private island that has become a haven for the wealthy and privileged. Its owner is the eccentric British playboy Colin Tennant, who is determined to turn this speck of white sand into a luxurious neo-colonial retreat for his rich friends and into a royal court in exile for the Queen’s rebellious sister, Princess Margaret.
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Vivid Imagery
- By GeauxGetLit on 07-24-22
By: Sarah McCoy
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Heiresses: Surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a wife’s inheritance was the property of her husband, making her vulnerable to kidnap, forced marriages, even confinement in an asylum. And in modern times, heiresses fell victim to fortune-hunters who squandered their millions.
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What listeners say about The Swans of Fifth Avenue
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- herrel😃👑
- 04-08-16
Too long
Interesting background story but it felt like a more detailed retelling of a gossip column series. Way too many descriptions of Babe Paley's makeup routine and overuse of the swan metaphor. I found the authors note at the end most frustrating when she states that all her subjects were liars in real life, so she can make up whatever she wants about them. Disrespectful to her subjects. Disappointed in the book overall. Should have been about 1/3 shorter.
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- CAPSLOCK
- 07-17-16
Lovely glimpseInto a different world
The narrator did an impressive job of making this story come to life. It was initially hard for me to get into as high society of that era is not my world but as I caught up I came to care for the swans and Capote. It wasn't my favorite book ever, but it was a good listen.
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- Meagan Askew
- 03-28-16
Great!
Loved the female voice, male's was somewhat distracting. Great story, I wanted to learn more of the background after reading
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- We Love Pat Altschul
- 07-22-23
Tremendously entertaining - a confectionary tale!
I listen to books while walking. This one may have cost me what remains of the cartilage in my knees. I did not want it to end.
I look forward to searching this author’s works for the next one. I’ll save it for when I want to drop another 5 pounds!
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- Christa M.
- 04-22-24
The Swans 🦢 of course.
The book flowed well, the added voices are just about outstanding! Wish there were more to read.
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- Constant Reader
- 02-14-16
Wanted to give 4-1/2 stars. Not quite perfect....
Any additional comments?
Some readers will have little interest in these characters and their world, floating like whipped cream on top of the Fifties and Sixties. The complex of relationships between Truman Capote and his "swans" (wealthy, socially powerful, gorgeous society women: Babe Paley and her sisters, Slim Keith, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pamel Digby Churchill Heyward Harriman and others); and their husbands, esp Bill Paley, is here treated in a "non-fiction novel", a literary form Capote claimed to invent, and used to impressive effect in his masterpiece, In Cold Blood.
Benjamin is not a stylist at Capote's level, but she writes well. (I should mention that i listened to an audible version instead of reading print.) She brings to life the emotional activity behind all that luxurious beauty and social perfection - she is esp good with Capote, Babe Paley, Slim Keith, and Bill Paley, our principle players.
I was already familiar with many of these stories, esp Capote's triumph and fall, and the aftermath of the story La Cote Basque, 1965. Many other reviewers have given vivid intros.
For me, the weakest points are:
The symbolic bookends at the beginning and end, happily brief.
The dialogue at the imagined "swan power lunch" after the Esquire publication, which seems somewhat weak.
The re-working of who might have left the stains on those sheets. While Benjamin's version has some poignancy, Benjamin's choice, who cared deeply for Babe, would never have behaved so - and this version undercuts the point of Truman's story: the deliberate insult the old-money, un-swan-like WASP wife intended to wield as she conveyed her contempt for the Jewish mogul who dared to believe himself in her league.
The best parts are the voices of Truman, Babe, Bill, and Slim, who come to life. They grew on me until they felt fully formed. The writer makes real the fragile trust Truman and Babe hold in each other, until he goes too far.
I wish someone would publish depth biographies of these swans and their world, and i would also love a photographic history. We can be nostalgic because this world is as lost as Fitzgerald's hopes and dreams, as given to Gatzby. These socialites already seemed quaint and "as seen through a glass" in the seventies, and Amanda Burden, Babe Paley's daughter, has chosen and succeeded at a very different and modern sort of life.
Curously the most successful of these swans, in the terms of today's worldviews, are Pamela Harriman, "the courtesan of the century", the least swan-like, who transformed herself into a real power with a notable career; CZ Guest, gardening expert, and to appearances the least fragile, most confident and emotionally whole of this group, and the one who stayed in touch with Capote; Gloria Vanderbilt, survivor of a horrible childhood, also re-invented herself as a notable businesswoman.
I started this expecting a "beach read" and found much more.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Trish
- 07-06-17
The True Underbelly of High Society
I liked this book very much, especially growing up seeing Truman Capote on television. It brings him out of the two-dimensional, caricature of a man that lives in my mind. The tragedy of trying to find love and fulfillment in the world of great wealth and power, to find that it is as cold as Alaska in January. I like Paul Boehmer's narration, but was not a fan of Cassandra Campbell's. Truman Capote had such a distinctive voice and cadence that I feel more study of it for her would have been beneficial. Or someone who had a better imitative ability. It doesn't have to be perfect, but was having a very difficult time visualizing Truman Capote, when she did his voice.
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- Cora
- 03-06-20
60's antifeminism
I loved the narrators and Truman capote character. excellent listen. It reminded me of reading Truman's "In Cold Blood," excellent book, reading "In Cold Blood" novel definitely improves the enjoyment of this novel.
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- Neicybones
- 08-10-16
loved the storyline
a nice journey into the twentieth century glamour life. the author and the narrator both brought this era to life. also stimulated her curiosity regarding the lives of the characters. additionally it leaves you wanting to know more
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- kellie capriola
- 05-09-22
Bravo, bravo!!!
I loved this story! Do yourself a favor and read/listen to it! Delightful details and kept me wanting more!
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