Ivory Joe

by Martyn Burke

Overview

Originally published by Bantam Books and hailed by critics, this love story, set in 1950s New York, Havana, and the deep south, begins with a divorce. In the eyes of Christie, their young daughter, Leo, and Tina Klein, mismatched and volatile, belong together.

Leo, a charming rogue and a player in New York’s garment industry, skates too close to the mob. Tina, a leftist activist who regularly pickets on behalf of the disadvantaged, has appointed herself manager of Joseph (“Ivory Joe”) Coulter, an ex boxer and a heart-busting black musician at a turning point in popular music history.

Meg Wolitzer wrote in the New York Times: “Mr. Burke weaves a deft plot involving the attempted theft of one of Ivory Joe’s songs, ‘Ghost Lover,’ and the ensuing escapades are frantic and convincing….Martyn Burke knows his territory and he keeps a jazzed up pace appropriate to the story and the era. …A real pleasure.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940011207211
Publisher:	Bev Editions
Publication date:	01/25/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	387 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Martyn Burke, novelist and award-winning director/writer of both documentaries and dramatic films, has travelled extensively from the Arctic Circle to the Amazon jungles, finding himself in the middle of wars and revolutions in Vietnam and Afghanistan. He has made undercover documentaries on the Mafia and KGB. He is the author of six books: The Commissar's Report, Laughing War, Ivory Joe, The Truth About the Night, Tiara, and The Shelling of Beverly Hills. A native of Canada, he divides his time between Toronto and Santa Monica.

Editorial Reviews

Mafia infiltration of the record industry in the early days of rock 'n' roll provides the basis for this funny, wonderfully affecting novel. Leo Klein, who owns a New York garment company, occupies himself with nightclubs, parties, horse racing and show girls when he's not fighting with wildly incompatible ex-wife Tina. A larger-than-life figure, Tina does impulsive things like picketing Leo's factory and appointing herself manager of Joseph (``Ivory Joe'') Coulter, a black, streetsmart rocker and ex-boxer with a knack for driving teen audiences into a frenzy. Burke ( Laughing War ) ingeniously interweaves the main story line with flashbacks to the 1930s and '40s, and with the narration of precocious nine-year-old Christie, whose mother drags her and sister Ruthie along on trips up to Harlem and on concert tours of the virulently racist 1950s South. As Christie schemes to reunite her parents, Leo sneakily fights to win custody, gambles in Havana and gets in over his head with the mob. If the writing often seems tailored to Hollywood tastes, this is still a raucous rock extravaganza with heart and soul. Film rights sold to Alan Ladd Productions. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Ivory Joe and the Classics are an up-and-coming rock 'n' roll band in 1950s New York. Through an accidental meeting, Christie and Ruthie's left-wing mother Tina becomes their manager. Although Tina is divorced from the girls' father Leo, a garment manufacturer with connections to the underworld, they are still very involved with each other, and the girls are constantly scheming to reunite them. Leo is jealous of Tina's connection wth Ivory Joe, and he gets drawn in when his gangster friends try to steal Joe's signature song. Told partly in Christie's voice and partly in that of an omniscient observer, the novel never comes fully to life. A marginal purchase, but film rights have already been sold, so there may be future demand.-- Janet Boyarin Blundell, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N.J.

Library Journal