Anjelica Huston’s “gorgeously written” (O, The Oprah Magazine) memoir is “an elegant, funny, and frequently haunting reminiscence of the first two decades of her life…A classic” (Vanity Fair).
In her first, dazzling memoir, Anjelica Huston shares the story of her deeply unconventional early life—her enchanted childhood in Ireland, living with her glamorous and artistic mother, educated by tutors and nuns, intrepid on a horse. Huston was raised on an Irish estate to which—between movies—her father, director John Huston, brought his array of extraordinary friends, from Carson McCullers and John Steinbeck to Peter O’Toole and Marlon Brando.
In London, where she lived with her mother and brother in the early sixties when her parents separated, Huston encountered the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. She understudied Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. Seventeen, striking, precocious, but still young and vulnerable, she was devastated when her mother died in a car crash. Months later she moved to New York, fell in love with the much older, brilliant but disturbed photographer, Bob Richardson, and became a model. Living in the Chelsea Hotel, working with Richard Avedon and other photographers, she navigated a volatile relationship and the dynamic cultural epicenter of New York in the seventies.
A Story Lately Told is an “evocative” (The New York Times), “magically beautiful” (The Boston Globe) memoir. Huston’s second memoir, Watch Me, will be published in November 2014.
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“Out of this elegy for a vanishedworld, the memoir becomes a seductive social history of the 1960s—and the storyof her fractious separation from an indomitable father and grief for the lossof the mother who was the ballast of her life…Her portrait of [New York’s]centers of hipness…is crystalline…Though her life did not hold the challengesfamiliar to the ninety-nine percent, it took strength to stay sensible amidetemptations that felled others…This book—not profound but quite delicious—showshow those qualities grew in both hospital and inhospitable soil.”
— New York Times Book Review
“A Story Lately Told is filled with glitter, glamour, and excitement, but it is underpinned by loss, solitude, and estrangement, and the need to tell the truth, which makes the book memorable and affecting. Anjelica Huston’s account of growing up in Ireland is fascinating and masterly, as is her version of life in London and New York in the 1960s.”
— Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author“Lucid, loving, all a memoir should be.”
— Joan Didion, National Book Award–winning author“A Story Lately Told is written with the magic of the Irish and a touch of the family genius. From her vivid descriptions of growing up in the horse country of County Galway, Ireland, to her glimpses of rough glamour in the Chelsea Hotel, Anjelica’s writing shines with her particular mix of intelligence, beauty, wit, and courage. Her book is gorgeous.”
— Mike Nichols, Academy Award-winning director“Evocative.”
— People“[Huston’s] lovely, novelistic writing carries the book.”
— Entertainment Weekly“An elegant, funny, and frequently haunting reminiscence of the first two decades of her life…A classic.”
— Vanity Fair“Compelling, thoughtful, starry reading…What’s particularly enjoyable about her story is the rhapsodic way that she beautifully describes that bygone world.”
— Guardian (UK)“[A Story Lately Told] is peopled by names like Carson McCullers, John Steinbeck, Peter O’Toole, Marlon Brando, Monty Clift, and the succession of gorgeous, interesting women who made up her father’s peripatetic life. Anjelica can really write. The prologue alone to her memoir is worthy.”
— Huffington Post“[A Story Lately Told] contains a plethora of compelling tales.”
— New York magazine“Intriguing…Huston offers a fascinating account of her charmed childhood (peppered with celebrities coming to dinner) and her rebellious stage.”
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Anjelica Huston, an Academy Award–winning actress and director, has received honors from the National Society of Film Critics, the Independent Spirit Awards, and a Golden Globe Award, as well as multiple Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Emmy awards and nominations. She most recently starred on the hit television show Smash.