First published 2013
Anjelica Huston chronicles her extraordinary early years in this debut memoir. She begins with her magical childhood on an Irish estate, where her director father John Huston hosted legendary guests like Carson McCullers, John Steinbeck, Peter O'Toole, and Marlon Brando between film projects. Tutored at home and fearless on horseback, young Anjelica lived an enchanted life with her glamorous, artistic mother. When her parents separated, she moved to London with her mother and brother, encountering the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac while understudying Marianne Faithfull in Hamlet. At seventeen, tragedy struck when her mother died in a car crash. Months later, Huston moved to New York, where she fell for the brilliant but troubled photographer Bob Richardson and launched her modeling career. Living at the Chelsea Hotel and working with Richard Avedon, she navigated a turbulent romance amid the cultural ferment of 1970s New York. Huston captures the vulnerability beneath her precocious exterior as she transformed from sheltered Irish girl to Manhattan model.
Genres: historical, coming-of-age, autobiography, memoir, biography-memoir, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chelsea Hotel, Ireland, London, New York
Period: 1970s, 20th-century
270 pages · Kindle Edition · Scribner
Content warnings: mental-illness