The audiobook and Ebook are available from Library2Go and
the hardcover is available here at the library.
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and
the Spending of a Great American Fortune By, Bill Dedman & Paul Clark
Newell Jr. narrated by, Kimberly Farr
Abbreviated synopsis from Goodreads:When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?
Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world.
It was very cool having actual interviews/phone calls with
Huguette on the audiobook, this makes the audio version very unique but you
still want to have the hardcover so you can see all the pictures of these
amazing houses completely furnished but empty, so I feel like the audio version
should come with a PDF of all the amazing pictures in the book because the two
together are amazing.
I thought it was interesting how W.A. Clark (Huguette’s
father) is not as well known as others of his time such as the Rockefellers but
he was a huge Copper King in Montana and made scads of money, I also found his Montana
senatorial race quite interesting too. There is a lot of background on Clark
himself almost more than about Huguette but still a fascinating story.
Huguette was a fascinating woman and from the sounds of it
generous to a fault, I think maybe some people did take advantage of her but I think
others were truly surprised by her generosity. One thing that was never really
fully explained was why she kept all these houses in pristine condition but
never lived in them, it is almost like they are shrines to her family but she
didn’t want to live there. I found it amazing that this woman who owned these mansions,
palaces really, but she spent the last 20 years of her life living in a
hospital room (no she was not sick) instead of these amazing homes boggles the
mind and does make it seem like she may not have been right in the head but
when you hear the phone calls with her cousin Paul she sounds pretty with it to
me. She also seemed like a very caring person and once she befriended you, you
were a friend for life and so were your children she would help out when needed.
I felt like Huguette was just a sweetheart, in the phone calls with Paul she
asks about family members and remembers so many things when Paul asks about
them and seems genuinely happy to talk to him even though the end of the calls
are very abrupt but I felt like she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to take up
their day talking to her not that she was being rude in the least but that
people have more important things than to talk to her all day, which I feels
says a lot about who she was as a person.
Narrated Kimberly Farr did a very good job at the narration
and I would listen to her again.
This book is well written and I felt it was interesting all
the way through, I highly recommend this book and its fascinating history.
4 Stars
