Book description
When Allegra Huston was four years old, her mother was killed in a car
crash. Soon afterwards, she was introduced to an intimidating man
wreathed in cigar smoke the legendary film director John Huston with the
words, This is your father . So began an extraordinary odyssey: from the
magical Huston estate in Ireland, to the Long Island suburbs, to a
hidden paradise in Mexico and, at the side of her older sister,
Anjelica, into the hilltop retreats of Jack Nicholson, Ryan O Neal, and
Marlon Brando. Allegra s is the penetrating gaze of an outsider never
quite sure if she belongs in this rarefied world, and of a motherless
child trying to make sense of her famous, fragmented family. Then, at
the age of twelve, Allegra s precarious sense of self is shattered when
she is, once more, introduced to her father her real one, this time, the
British aristocrat and historian John Julius Norwich. At the heart of
Love Child is Allegra s search through the unreliable certainties of
memory for the widely adored mother she never knew the ghost who
shadowed her childhood and left her in a web of awkward and unwelcome
truths. With clear-eyed tenderness, Allegra tells of how she forged
bonds with both her famous fathers, transforming her mother s difficult
legacy into a hard-won blessing. Beautifully written and forensically
honest, Love Child is a seductive insight into one of Hollywood s great
dynasties, and the story of how, in a family that defied convention, one
woman found her balance on the shifting sands of conflicting loyalties.
When Allegra Huston was four years old, her mother was killed in a car
crash. Soon afterwards, she was introduced to an intimidating man
wreathed in cigar smoke the legendary film director John Huston with the
words, This is your father . So began an extraordinary odyssey: from the
magical Huston estate in Ireland, to the Long Island suburbs, to a
hidden paradise in Mexico and, at the side of her older sister,
Anjelica, into the hilltop retreats of Jack Nicholson, Ryan O Neal, and
Marlon Brando. Allegra s is the penetrating gaze of an outsider never
quite sure if she belongs in this rarefied world, and of a motherless
child trying to make sense of her famous, fragmented family. Then, at
the age of twelve, Allegra s precarious sense of self is shattered when
she is, once more, introduced to her father her real one, this time, the
British aristocrat and historian John Julius Norwich. At the heart of
Love Child is Allegra s search through the unreliable certainties of
memory for the widely adored mother she never knew the ghost who
shadowed her childhood and left her in a web of awkward and unwelcome
truths. With clear-eyed tenderness, Allegra tells of how she forged
bonds with both her famous fathers, transforming her mother s difficult
legacy into a hard-won blessing. Beautifully written and forensically
honest, Love Child is a seductive insight into one of Hollywood s great
dynasties, and the story of how, in a family that defied convention, one
woman found her balance on the shifting sands of conflicting loyalties.
