Answered Prayers is the final (unfinished) novel by Truman Capote. Capote himself had said of it "either I'm going to kill it, or it's going to kill me". It may not quite have killed him but it certainly killed his career as a socialite when the first four chapters of it were serialised by Esquire Magazine in 1975-6.

The stories deal with the lives and gossip of the high society, beau monde, rich American, over polished, too thin and too rich heiresses and WAGs that formed Capote's desperate social circle. His merciless depictions of them (with their names barely changed) and his reportage almost verbatim of drunken lunchtime conversations, scandalised the upper classes. After the publication of the second story "La Cote Basque" (then an upscale eatery in New York and favoured hang out of the Long Island set) they cut him dead

Capote died in 1984, an event Gore Vidal described as "a good career move"

Ultimately, Capote died divorced from the world he had so longed for, bitter, defeated and drunk as a skunk. Unable to admit his mistake, he spent his last days protesting too much that he had never cared for these people or their trappings of wealth and priviledge

A great piece about Capote, along with decent pictures and extracts of La Cote Basque with the thinly disguised names substitued for the real thing can be found here