A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York

by Anjelica Huston, Anjelica Huston (Read by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451656305
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	10/14/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	298,991
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Academy Award-winning actress and director Anjelica Huston has received honors from the National Society of Film Critics; the Independent Spirit Awards; and the Golden Globe Awards; as well as multiple Oscar, BAFTA, and Emmy awards or nominations. Huston most recently starred on the hit TV show Smash. She is the author of the memoirs A Story Lately Told and Watch Me.

Editorial Reviews

Huston comes by her vivid life stories honestly. They are her birthright. And how fortunate for readers that she’s an easy and graceful storyteller. Read this memoir for the thrilling, improbable sentences that stop you cold. Most of all, read it for the sheer pleasure of listening to someone render a memory so tactile you can astrally project yourself there.” —Joumana Khatib, New York Times

“Anjelica Huston grew up in what sounds a fairy tale—magically beautiful, yet tinged with loss, sadness, and monsters.” —Kate Tuttle, Boston Globe

“An elegy for a vanished world, A Story Lately Told becomes a seductive social history of the 1960s—and the story of Huston’s fractious separation from an indomitable father and grief for the loss of the mother who was the ballast of her life.” —Sheila Weller, The New York Times Book Review

“Impressively written in a style that is as graceful and natural as breathing and as observant as that by a ‘born writer.’... Huston comes of age surrounded by talent, pot, fame and photographers, and tells her tale with unexpected distinction.” —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News (Editor’s Choice)

“Anjelica Huston has lived a big, colorful life—big and colorful enough to fill two volumes of an autobiography... Huston has a way with a descriptive phrase, and it’s on display in A Story Lately Told.” —Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

“Huston’s lovely, novelistic writing carries the book... As a storyteller, she’s having more fun than a monkey in a lingerie drawer.” —Melissa Maerz, Entertainment Weekly

“Evocative.” —Mary Pols, People

“An elegant, funny, and frequently haunting reminiscence of the first two decades of her life...A classic.” —Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair

“A Story Lately Told contains a plethora of compelling tales.” —Maggie Lange, New York Magazine

“Huston’s privileged childhood is described with great texture. The enormous estate in Ireland where her family lived is a rambling, magical place. The names that are dropped in this book don’t constitute name-dropping, but are simply the names that populated her childhood... Huston is a smart and subtle enough writer not to aim for a pop diagnosis, but instead, once again, goes for something truer, deeper and richer... A stirring memoir.” —Meg Wolitzer, NPR

“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.” —Liz Smith, Huffington Post

“Structured in short, colorful vignettes, A Story Lately Told shows off Ms. Huston’s fabulous memory, keen observations and lovely use of language.” —Carol O’Sullivan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Compelling, thoughtful, starry reading...What’s particularly enjoyable about her story is the rhapsodic way that she beautifully describes that bygone world.” —Alexander Larman, The Guardian

“Elegant and economical.” —Helen Brown, The Telegraph

From the Publisher

A Story Lately Told proves that Huston is a third-generation storyteller. As she chronicles her earliest memories through age 22, she echoes the rhythms and structures of novels like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and What Maisie Knew, focusing on surface sensations of youth while implying profound internal changes.

Philadelphia Inquirer - Carrie Rickey

Impressively written in a style that is as graceful and natural as breathing and as observant as that by a ‘born writer.’…[Huston] comes of age surrounded by talent, pot, fame and photographers, and tells her tale with unexpected distinction.

The Buffalo News (Editor’s Choice) - Jeff Simon

Huston’s privileged childhood is described with great texture. The enormous estate in Ireland where her family lived is a rambling, magical place. The names that are dropped in this book don’t constitute name-dropping, but are simply the names that populated her childhood…[Huston] is a smart and subtle enough writer not to aim for a pop diagnosis, but instead, once again, [goes] for something truer, deeper and richer…[A] stirring memoir.

NPR - Meg Wolitzer

Evocative.

People - Mary Pols

[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 - Liz Smith

Structured in short, colorful vignettes, A Story Lately Told shows off Ms. Huston’s fabulous memory, keen observations and lovely use of language.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Carol O’Sullivan

If a storytelling gene exists, Huston inherited one from her father, the Oscar-winning director John Huston, and another from her mother, the ballet dancer Enrica Soma, who nurtured in her children a love of books and a gift for observation.

Reuters - Ellen Freilich

A wise, witty, and wonderful autobiography.

Showbiz 411 - Roger Friedman

Intriguing…Huston offers a fascinating account of her charmed childhood (peppered with celebrities coming to dinner) and her rebellious stage.

Shelf Awareness

Told in lush prose, [A Story Lately Told] is at once an eyewitness account of the social history of London and New York in the '60s and '70s, a wistful remembrance of childhood in an idyllic Irish country manor, and an exploration of what it meant to be reared at the crossroads of celebrity and culture as the daughter of director John Huston (“The African Queen,” “The Maltese Falcon”) and his fourth wife, Italian-American ballerina Enrica Soma.

Orange County Register - Samantha Dunn

Anjelica Huston grew up in what sounds a fairy tale—magically beautiful, yet tinged with loss, sadness, and monsters.

Boston Globe - Kate Tuttle

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

[An] elegy for a vanished world, [A Story Lately Told] becomes a seductive social history of the 1960s—and the story of [Huston’s] fractious separation from an indomitable father and grief for the loss of the mother who was the ballast of her life.

The New York Times Book Review - Sheila Weller

[Huston’s] lovely, novelistic writing carries the book….As a storyteller, she’s having more fun than a monkey in a lingerie drawer.

Entertainment Weekly - Melissa Maerz

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

Elegantly written…Told with grace and honesty. You would expect no less from this fascinating, unusual woman.

Jewish Journal of LA - Joy Bennett

An elegant, funny, and frequently haunting reminiscence of the first two decades of her life…A classic.

Vanity Fair - Graydon Carter

Compelling, thoughtful, starry reading…What’s particularly enjoyable about her story is the rhapsodic way that she beautifully describes that bygone world.

Guardian (UK) - Alexander Larman

Elegant and economical.

Telegraph (UK) - Helen Brown

[A Story Lately Told] contains a plethora of compelling tales.

New York magazine - Maggie Lange

Anjelica Huston has lived a big, colorful life—big and colorful enough to fill two volumes of an autobiography…Huston has a way with a descriptive phrase, and it’s on display in A Story Lately Told.

USA Today - Jocelyn McClurg

Structured in short, colorful vignettes, A Story Lately Told shows off Ms. Huston’s fabulous memory, keen observations and lovely use of language.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Carol O’Sullivan

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

08/19/2013
Actress Huston achieves some moments of ringing clarity in this memoir of her youth, especially as regards her famous director father, John Huston, whom she was both terrified and in awe of (people “considered him a lion, a leader, the pirate they wished they had the audacity to be”). The daughter of his fourth wife, the dancer Ricki Soma (who was much younger than him), Anjelica Huston and her older brother, Tony, were raised in a remote 110-acre estate in West Country, Ireland, called St. Clerans, where being homeschooled; being visited by famous, quirky people; riding horses amid wildly romantic scenery; and playing dress-up filled her youth. Her father was frequently absent on far-flung shoots, and her exotic mother was “out of her element.” With her parents’ separation, Anjelica moved between Ireland and London, where her mother lived and where Anjelica went to school in the 1960s. She gradually embraced an acting career, appearing in her father’s A Walk with Love and Death, though without confidence. After the death of her mother in 1969, Huston slipped into a more comfortable role of modeling and serving as the muse for the troubled, brilliant (and much older) fashion photographer Bob Richardson over four tortured years. Huston ends her brave account by describing her complex relationship with her father. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Lucid, loving, all a memoir should be.

Joan Didion

Extraordinary.

Vanity Fair

The first 20 years of Angelica Huston’s memoir evoke a life of international celebrity in rural Ireland, the “go-go” '60s in London, and the fashion world in '70s New York. Her exotic and privileged lifestyle is evident, but Huston’s careful enunciation and unvarying rhythm make it all sound disappointingly flat. While passages have many richly articulate and evocative word choices, Huston’s voice and text reveal no self-examination or emotional connection. Author as narrator can be a satisfying pairing, often revealing to listeners, but in this audiobook Huston could be reading a phone book of famous names. This audio performance lacks any personal commitment and reveals little of the much admired actor. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

2013-09-25
An Oscar-winning actress from a celebrated entertainment family recalls her peripatetic childhood and adolescence, her various awakenings and epiphanies. The granddaughter of Oscar winner Walter Huston (1949, for The Treasure of Sierra Madre) and daughter of Oscar-winning actor and director John Huston (1949, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, for directing and screenwriting) writes that she "was a lonely child." However, so many personalities and celebrities swirl through the story that we begin to wonder about loneliness in a crowd. Born in 1951, she soon became a part of her father's world, though he was often absent, off filming. She adored her mother (John's fourth wife) but would soon learn that her father's carnal needs were immense. He would marry a fifth time but also carry on multiple affairs with--it seems--just about any woman who would yield. The earliest sections of Huston's memoir are the strongest: poignant details about her childhood affections, the men and women who worked on the Irish estate purchased with her father's film profits (his habitual gambling ever endangered all), the quotidian routines of girlhood. But as time progresses, the memoir sags. Soon, her selection principle seems to be "I remember this, so I'm including it," and a phone book of names assails readers, challenging both memory and interest. However, there are some amusing anecdotes--e.g., a plane ride with the Monkees, an appearance with an oddly detached Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. The death of her mother (car crash) was obviously traumatizing, as was a longtime affair with photographer Bob Richardson, an affair that veered toward abusive before its end. This first installment--to be followed next year with the second volume--concludes as the author heads to Los Angeles. Banality clutches the text tightly, too rarely releasing its wings.

Kirkus Reviews