Breakfast with Tiffany is a harrowing and funny memoir about the author's first year as guardian of his "thirteen-going-on-thirty" talented and troubled niece.

Ed was a single, gay, 40-year-old living a successful though routinized urban life when his much-adored niece is sent to live with him in Greenwich Village. Instant parent Uncle Eddy watches his best laid plans go awry as the pair struggles to figure out their new relationship and become a family. With an edgy wit and compassion reminiscent of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, Ed recounts not only the coming of age of his beloved niece but his own as well. Together Uncle Eddy and Tiffany face situations that are sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious, and never less than authentically human."She's 13, he's 40; she's been given her walking papers from her mother, he's the uncle there to catch her: they are a modernized odd couple, and the sparks they throw are a glowing pyrotechnic display. Tiffany is a life force with attitude problems, a taste for belly-button jewels and face tackle, who informs Wintle that snorting dust will make you paranoid (heroin makes you mellow, she notes), and can play her uncle's heart like a bongo and crack it like a coconut; Wintle is an obsessive-compulsive "all-time Control Queen" who will rise to the occasion, bringing to it a delightfully nuanced, impractical, caring, ham-handed, heart-gladdening, inclusive, protective approach. [Wintle] struggles to meet each new challenge head on, taking cues from his own sad youth and fraught adulthood . . . with a gorgeous clarity. The story begins and ends with Tiffany's freshman year at high school . . . leaving readers to pray for volumes sophomore through senior."Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)