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A review by christinecc
Solid Ivory: Memoirs by James Ivory
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
3.5
James Ivory is a familiar name to anyone who likes Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, and Anthony Hopkins in sad but gorgeous British period pieces--all featuring the famous Merchant Ivory trademark of lush sets and very quiet acting.
So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Ivory was not, in fact, British, but actually American. Born in California and raised in Oregon, Ivory gives us the tale of his early years in an easy chronological order for the first half of his biography. It's a bit of a lopsided treatment, to be frank. He talks about his day-to-day life a lot, with his early memories of the Great Depression, his school friends, his popularity in high school and subsequent "fall from grace" once he entered the Greek scene at university.
Autobiographies are always a tricky business to write and an even trickier business to review because I can't exactly say "I would have liked more details about X, Y, or Z, please." This is someone's life and personal thoughts, and anything Ivory tells us is more than that to which we are entitled. Still, I was surprised by how little Ivory talked about his relationship to his family, particularly his sister who pops up a good 50 pages in as a fully-formed teenager, with hardly any mention of her in early childhood and hardly any more after high school.
What really shocked me were the number of letters Ivory had kept from his early years, given how often he's moved around and (my apologies) how old he is (born in 1928!). It's a very lovely treat to see excerpts of his correspondence, and it lends the book a greater personal quality.
The second half of the book consists of a series of person-focused chapters, each about a collaborator of Ivory's or a good friend. These made for excellent stories but were, as far as I could tell, not really in-depth overviews of his relationships. The parts about Ivory's long-time collaborator and significant other, Ismail Merchant, were treated with a moving restraint. I suppose I would have preferred more about how they met (which Ivory does cover briefly), how they came to work together, and so on, but what we have is very telling of their relationship, and I'm glad Ivory sat down to write this at all.
As an added surprise, fans of Ivory's screenplay for the film "Call Me By Your Name" may appreciate the light he sheds on that creative process. Ivory was originally set to co-direct the piece and later found himself shafted, for reasons he couldn't make out. I hadn't expected that production to be contentious. We've heard very little about it in the press, and ultimately Ivory won an award for the screenplay so I suppose it all worked out.
Overall, "Solid Ivory" is a semi-solid biography, a bit rambling at times but when you've lived a life as long as James Ivory has, you'd have a difficult time picking out the best parts, too. Maybe he'll write another one about the actual movie-making process, which was mostly left out.
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for granting me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Ivory was not, in fact, British, but actually American. Born in California and raised in Oregon, Ivory gives us the tale of his early years in an easy chronological order for the first half of his biography. It's a bit of a lopsided treatment, to be frank. He talks about his day-to-day life a lot, with his early memories of the Great Depression, his school friends, his popularity in high school and subsequent "fall from grace" once he entered the Greek scene at university.
Autobiographies are always a tricky business to write and an even trickier business to review because I can't exactly say "I would have liked more details about X, Y, or Z, please." This is someone's life and personal thoughts, and anything Ivory tells us is more than that to which we are entitled. Still, I was surprised by how little Ivory talked about his relationship to his family, particularly his sister who pops up a good 50 pages in as a fully-formed teenager, with hardly any mention of her in early childhood and hardly any more after high school.
What really shocked me were the number of letters Ivory had kept from his early years, given how often he's moved around and (my apologies) how old he is (born in 1928!). It's a very lovely treat to see excerpts of his correspondence, and it lends the book a greater personal quality.
The second half of the book consists of a series of person-focused chapters, each about a collaborator of Ivory's or a good friend. These made for excellent stories but were, as far as I could tell, not really in-depth overviews of his relationships. The parts about Ivory's long-time collaborator and significant other, Ismail Merchant, were treated with a moving restraint. I suppose I would have preferred more about how they met (which Ivory does cover briefly), how they came to work together, and so on, but what we have is very telling of their relationship, and I'm glad Ivory sat down to write this at all.
As an added surprise, fans of Ivory's screenplay for the film "Call Me By Your Name" may appreciate the light he sheds on that creative process. Ivory was originally set to co-direct the piece and later found himself shafted, for reasons he couldn't make out. I hadn't expected that production to be contentious. We've heard very little about it in the press, and ultimately Ivory won an award for the screenplay so I suppose it all worked out.
Overall, "Solid Ivory" is a semi-solid biography, a bit rambling at times but when you've lived a life as long as James Ivory has, you'd have a difficult time picking out the best parts, too. Maybe he'll write another one about the actual movie-making process, which was mostly left out.
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for granting me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.