Breakfast at Tiffany's

It can be hard to quite put your finger on why you do not like a book.

Perhaps I lay out my stall too early.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a thin novella about a man who finds himself building neighbours with a flighty, manic-pixie-dreamgirl woman with a dark past.

The book is well-written, easy to understand and moves at an absolute clip. My problem is that I didn't like any of the characters. There is nobody to root for. The narrating author is petty, childish and jealous, without being funny or charming, and Holly Golightly - the neighbour - is - as far as the central characters are concerned - charm on legs. The problem is that that charm isn't in the writing. She too is childish, flighty and not the sort of person it seems like you'd want to spend a journey in a lift with, let alone pine after from the next floor.

To make a comparison, I think this is also true of the Great Gatsby. The narrator there I'm not sure I root for either, and Gatsby (if we can call him a manic-pixie-dreamboy?) doesn't seem like much of a laugh either. Perhaps in that book it's the mystery behind him that is the pull. The revelation in Tiffany's felt pedestrian and a little underwhelming.

Perhaps it is a book to be understood, rather than enjoyed for me. I see what he's going for. But I could not recommend it. That said, it is short. And you have to love that.