It was the perfect distraction while cooped up with COVID-19 isolation. All in all, a grand story about a grand lady. You get to hear actual recorded conversations with Hugette. If you get a chance, listen to the audiobook. 4, 2013 The story of how the book Empty Mansions came to be, in the words of Bill Dedman, one of its two authors, begins with an exercise in American aspiration.

The book argues a slightly different case, but it’s hard not to see greedy motives when you consider the amount of money involved. The book Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune is a collaboration between investigative reporter Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell. It’s sad how Hugette Clark’s life ended, and how those closest to her were basically swindling her of her fortune. I can’t believe she lived to be over 100. I found myself growing quite fond of this sweet old lady and would love to tour her homes and see some of her castle creations. Or watching countless hours of The Jetson’s and The Smurfs, while your nurse freezes the frames for you to study the animation. Or collecting thousands of dolls and spending years commissioning elaborate doll houses from craftsmen from around the world.

Imagine owning opulent estates that you never set foot in. The author argues that she wasn’t mentally ill, but she sure was peculiar. At its heart is heiress Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, when she died at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen for decades. Empty Mansions The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great Fortune by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.įascinating account of an obscure multi-millionaire heiress living a life of seclusion in lavish mansions and apartments, to her final decades in self-imposed isolation in a hospital room. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the opulence of the 19th century's Gilded Age with a 21st century battle over a 300 million inheritance.

The book empty mansions