Arriving at Skully's Landing, a vast, decaying mansion on an isolated plantation in Mississippi, Joel meets his sullen stepmother Amy; her cousin Randolph, a gay man and dandy; the defiant tomboy Idabel, a girl who becomes his friend; and Jesus and Zoo, the two black caretakers of the home.

When he finally is allowed to see his father, Joel is stunned to find he is a mute quadriplegic, having tumbled down a flight of stairs after being accidentally shot by Randolph and nearly dying.

[8] She is also reminiscent of Capote's maternal grandmother, Mabel Knox, who always wore a glove on her left hand to cover an unknown malady and was known for her Southern aristocratic ways.

She wears a scarf on her elongated neck to hide a large scar inflicted by Keg Brown, who was sentenced to a chain gang for his crime.

Deborah Davis points out that Joel's thorny and psychological voyage while living with eccentric Southern relatives involves maturing "from an uncertain boy into a young man with a strong sense of self and acceptance of his homosexuality.

"[14] Gerald Clarke describes the conclusion of the novel, "Finally, when he goes to join the queer lady in the window, Joel accepts his destiny, which is to be homosexual, to always hear other voices and live in other rooms.

John Knowles says, "The theme in all of his [Truman Capote's] books is that there are special, strange gifted people in the world and they have to be treated with understanding.

Clarke asserts that the four major themes of Other Voices, Other Rooms are "the loneliness that afflicts all but the stupid or insensitive; the sacredness of love, whatever its form; the disappointment that invariably follows high expectations; and the perversion of innocence.

"[18] Other Voices, Other Rooms was published in 1979 as part of the 60 Signed Limited Editions (1977–1982) series by the Franklin Library, described as a "distributor of great 'classic title' books produced in fine bindings for collectors".

[19] In an article about young American writers, Life magazine conferred Capote equal space alongside celebrities such as Gore Vidal and Jean Stafford, even though he had never published a novel.

Diana Trilling wrote in The Nation about Capote's "striking literary virtuosity" and praised "his ability to bend language to his poetic moods, his ear for dialect and varied rhythms of speech.

"[21] Capote was compared to William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, and even Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.

"[23] Some twenty-five years later, Ian Young points out that Other Voices, Other Rooms notably avoided the period convention of an obligatory tragedy, typically involving suicide, murder, madness, despair or accidental death for the gay protagonist.

[25] More than fifty years after its publication, Anthony Slide notes that Other Voices, Other Rooms is one of only four familiar gay novels of the first half of the 20th century.

The other three novels are Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar.

[28] Gerald Clarke, a modern biographer, observed, "The famous photograph: Harold Halma's picture on the dustjacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside.

The movie starred David Speck as Joel Harrison Knox, Anna Thomson as Miss Amy Skully, and Lothaire Bluteau as Randolph.