EMPTY MANSIONS is my first audiobook of 2018. (The plan is to dedicate most of my audiobook listening to nonfiction this year. We’ll see how it goes!) Abandoned places are fascinating to me. While the mansions in this book weren’t abandoned entirely (there were caretakers on-site), the eccentric owner – Huguette Clark – hadn’t lived in them or seen them in decades. In fact, she spent her last 20 years living unnecessarily in hospital rooms, until her death in 2011 at age 104.

The first part of the book was all about Huguette’s father, W. A. Clark, who amassed a great fortune in copper mines and railroads during the late 1800s. Mr. Clark had quite an exciting life, going from a humble Pennsylvania farm boy to an extremely wealthy industrialist with a passion for art and the finest things money could buy. When he died in 1925, his fortune was split equally between Huguette and her four older half-siblings.

The rest of the book focused on Huguette and the ways she spent her inheritance. She was an unusual person, private to a fault, and very generous to people and causes close to her heart. She seemed happiest when she was hidden away from the world, among her art and her dollhouses.

As she got older, I think there were some who took advantage of her generosity. She gave away millions and millions, but was she manipulated by those few who were close to her? Conflicting wills written close together bring her mental state into question.

EMPTY MANSIONS is a well-researched blend of American History, biography, and family drama. The audiobook was performed by Kimberly Farr, and she did a fantastic job keeping me engaged in Huguette’s story. It also contained snippets of phone conversations between Huguette and her cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the co-authors of this book.

Overall, I enjoyed EMPTY MANSIONS, though given how insanely private Huguette Clark was during her life, I think she would cringe knowing this book is out there. ( )

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman was a fascinating read. This is an extensively well researched and well written account of a forgotten American Heiress and her father W.A Clark.

Having recently watched the series on TV "The Men who Build America" ( Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan) I was delighted when I received this book on W.A Clark and his family who were major players in copper mining and other industries during the 1880s to 1930s. I really enjoy books of this nature and Empty Mansions proved to be right up my street.

When the author noticed in 2009 a mansion for sale which was unoccupied for nearly sixty years he became curious and he did some research and found a surprising portal into American History. This book is a fascinating account of mystery, wealth, loss and finally to a twenty first century battle over an estate worth $300 Million. Huguette Clark is the lonely reclusive figure at the heart of this story who lived as a reclusive figure in a hospital room in New York for 30 years until her death in 2011.

I loved everything about this book, the historical account of W. A Clark and the building of his empire was so interesting and very well researched. I loved the photographs in the book and found myself stopping throughout this book to Google places and stories. I was sad and at times aghast at the wealth and opulence of the Clark Family. I was shocked at the vast sums of money Huguette paid out to hospitals, carers and friends in order to live the life of privacy that she chooses.

Huguette's story is a bizarre but fascinating one and I really enjoyed this book from start to finish.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the opportunity to read this book in return for an unbiased review.
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The rich are not like you and me-they have money-or so the saying goes. One wonders what it would be like to not have to worry about food , shelter and clothing, but, of course a whole new crop of worries creep in ala Maslowe's hierarchy of needs and this book is the story of what it was like for one interesting person with unimaginable wealth at her disposal ( )

Excellent story. Full of history. Loved the actual calls hearing her voice brought the story to life. ( )

A richly detailed and fascinating portrait of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark. ( )

Huguette Clark was a woman who grew up with extreme wealth. She owned properties in the United States that were never lived in by her, but were kept maintained as if they were. She was an artist, a collector of Japanese items, etc. She had major pieces of art in her possession, jewelry, musical instruments.
She eventually ended up living in a hospital for 20 years. Why? I believe that one would have had to know her to figure that out.
This book was fascinating. ( )

Very interesting story of the recluse daughter of a great fortune. ( )

Interesting, well-written. ( )

Audio

Candy for the mind...this was rich in detail and as key to me as the detail was the level of respect towards Madame Clark. For history buffs, as well as those who love a good story, a peek inside a different lifestyle and a character so unique and kind. ( )

Fascinating story. I don't know how I have never heard of W. A. Clark and his daughter Huguette. Clark made his fortune starting with copper mines, then went on to be involved with banking, railroads, and newspapers to name a few. He created a town that became Las Vegas and built the first railway between LA and Salt Lake City. However, this book focused on his daughter Huguette who lived to be 104. During her life, she lived the life of a recluse, her main contact with people being the phone and letters. With her death, her distant relatives went to court to gain her wealth. This book is very well written and very informative and interesting. Highly recommend. ( )

The part about William Clark at the beginning was far more interesting than the part about Hugette herself. My interest waned. ( )

Way more information than necessary. ( )

I rarely, maybe make that never, read biographies about rich families but this book is fascinating. I bought it at the airport in Santa Barbara because it is the site of one of the mansions.The book is about Huguette, the daughter of W. A Clark, who made several fortunes and left them all to Huguette. She decorated, maintained and staffed all the mansions but spent very little time in them.They contained valuable paintings and furniture. As she aged she became very reclusive and died at the age of 103 in a single hospital room which had been her home for many years. She signed 2 contradictory wills in the last month of her life and the lawyers are still trying to decide how to implement her wishes. ( )

Fine, but underwhelming.
Money ruins people. The end. No real mystery there. ( )

Okay, I will admit that at times I like being a bit of a voyeur and reading about really wealthy or really famous people. It's a life I will never live and therefore will never understand. The best I can do is read about it and hope to gain a little bit of insight and empathy. Also, sometimes people are really weird or really interesting or really batsh*t crazy, and, being a curious human, I want to read about that!

This book is about the life of Huguette Clark, an heiress to a copper fortune born in 1906 who lived over 100 years. She had many incredible houses and apartments and instruments and paintings and dolls (so. many. dolls.) and yet spent most of her later years willingly confined to a hospital room. She gave money away like candy to anybody who gave enough of a sob story to her.

I cannot begin to comprehend the family politics that occur when a $300 million inheritance is at stake (it's bad enough when my siblings and I, all pretty solidly middle-class, try to decide what to eat when we see each other every couple years), especially when that family is only related by one ancestor (Huguette's father was married twice, and she was the only child of her parents who lived to adulthood), and even more especially when that family hasn't had contact with the deceased in many years and is several generations removed from her. Add in to that some sketchy accountants and lawyers and nurses... well, it's kind of a clusterf*ck.

Maybe, reading about that kind of a thing is right up your alley. In that case, you'll love this book! To me, I found it mildly entertaining and it was just about what I wanted to read about while waiting around in airports this winter break. It was just voyueristic enough to satiate the baser sides of my reading appetite, but not really amazing enough to be something I'll remember for years to come. Also, the Kindle version is a vast disappointment given the photo qualities possible on black and white e-ink. ( )

Not sure about this book. Too much money does not really help ( )

Audiobook narrated by Kimberly Farr.

Subtitle: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

From the book jacket: 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 19th century with a 21st-century battle over a $300 million inheritance.

My reactions
I remember the news coverage when Ms Clark was “discovered” living in a hospital room while her several mansions stood empty. Despite being generally healthy, she had lived in hospital rooms for some twenty years. She saw virtually no one but her private duty nurse. Even her attorney and accountant were limited to phone conversations with her. She never let any of her relatives know she was in the hospital, insisting that all correspondence be directed to her Park Avenue penthouse, where a caretaker dutifully brought the mail to her hospital room. The same caretaker took phone messages and Huguette would then phone the person back from her hospital room, never letting on she wasn’t actually in her home.

I found this completely fascinating. Dedman went back in history to outline her father’s early life and the way he made his fortune. He was definitely of the “robber baron” class, ruthless in business dealings and rather crooked in his political career. Huguette was his youngest child, born of his second marriage. She and her five half-siblings shared his fortune upon his death. And it was a massive one.

This story made me so very sad for this woman who, for all her wealth, lived such a lonely and limited life. And yet, she appeared to be quite happy and content to live as she did. By many accounts she was vivacious and charming, loved painting and music, but she was intensely private and preferred the company of the many dolls she collected, apparently playing with them in the elaborate dollhouses she commissioned. Was she taken advantage of by her caretakers? Was she competent to handle her own affairs? What happened to all that money?

As I read this, I could not help but think of an elderly relative whose primary caretaker is a tenacious gate-keeper. Certainly there is no massive fortune at stake, and we DO have contact with the relative, even going out to lunch now and again, but I can see how a trusted person could take advantage of that trust for someone all alone in life.

Dedman partnered with the reclusive heiress’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell Jr, to write this book. Paul had never met his cousin, but he had many telephone conversations with her over the years, as well as some correspondence. Transcripts of their phone conversations are included in the book, as well as the text of some of the cards and letters she wrote him.

Kimberly Farr does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. As an added bonus those sections of the book where a conversation between Huguette and her cousin Paul occurred are actual tapes of the real conversations, so the listener hears Huguette’s own voice. ( )

I am sure that there are many people who would enjoy this book. It seemed well-written. However, it was not something I found interesting for me personally.

For some odd reason, I had thought this was going to be more historic than it was. I could not get through the first chapter without a feeling of intruding in the life of someone who clearly wanted to be left alone. It seems like a scrutinization of the way other people live, and I detest that kind of violation of privacy.
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I found Huguette's father's story interesting. I suppose that's because he did so much to build his fortune. Unfortunately, Huguette was a recluse, so her story, although interesting at times, was mostly boring. There is a story here; I'd recommend skimming parts of it and reading other parts in detail. ( )

Sad. ( )

Huguette Clark's father made millions in mining and railroad ventures in the Gilded Age, but his daughter Huguette lived out much of her life as a recluse, spending the last decades in a hospital room, even though she was perfectly healthy.

As a peek into the life of the super-rich, it is staggering. From her father's Park Avenue mansion (26 bedrooms, 31 bathrooms and five art galleries for a family of four -- plus staff, of course) to Huguette's determination to reproduce her late mother's bedroom in another apartment while leaving the originals in an unoccupied one -- the curtain is drawn back on people who spend unthinkable sums to gratify their whims. But at the same time, Huguette Clark is shown as a loving and generous patron, not only of the arts, but to family and friends. She was lavish in her financial gifts to them, but utterly parsimonious with her time and physical presence.

The book outlines what is known of her life, most drawn from the voluminous correspondence she left behind, but never really speculates as to why she became so reclusive in her later years or why she spent the last 20 years of her life in a hospital room when she was fully recovered from the health emergency that sent her there.

Fascinating reading about an ultimately unknowable character. ( )

I remembered hearing about Huguette Clark in the news and when I saw this book I wanted to read it to find out more about the story. It is a fascinating story. I listened to the audio and enjoyed hearing the actual audio of the phone conversations. Since I went to college in Santa Barbara I am interested in finding out more about the Clarks home in that area and the influence they had. I will follow up to learn more! ( )

I really enjoyed this book. If you are not used to regular non-fiction, you might not like this. It does not read like a novel like some non-fiction will occasionally. I, however, was happy with it. I had heard about Hugette Clarke before she died and was interested in what had happened to her and her life. She donated lots of money as well as spent lots of money. ( )

Empty Mansions This is less a review of the book than of Huguette Clark's life. I give her 4 1/2 stars for staying true to her own peculiar self for more than a century. I don't know that this is a great book viewed strictly on literary terms--the writing is purely serviceable and I don't think the organization works well--but the story of Huguette Clark is going to stay with me for a long time.
 
I said in my post yesterday that Huguette Clark was happy, and she certainly was for a long time. But something happened as she got older. Her staff dwindled. She developed a facial cancer that was left untreated for a significant period of time. When someone finally sought treatment for her, the cancer had made it nearly impossible to eat and she had almost starved to death. she required cosmetic surgery to repair the damage to her face, and she was no longer able to eat solid foods. (The big flaw of this book, in my opinion, is that there is a ten-year gap which goes undescribed, that might explain how this possibly could have happened. Yes, her staff was smaller -- but you would think that even a staff of one could have prevented the cancer from advancing so far before it was treated.) It is astonishing that she managed to recover from this cancer and then live another two decades.
 
As I suspected, the last twenty years, which she spent in the hospital, took a dark and disturbing turn. She was still, in many ways, happy. But she was also clearly taken advantage of, by her attorney, her accountant, and most significantly, her beloved nurse, to whom she gave literally millions of dollars over the course of twenty years. (Clark paid for the nurse's children's school from preschool through college. She paid for vacations and camps and summer homes and a Bentley.) Clark's will cut out her family completely, leaving vast sums to caregivers, as well as establishing an arts foundation in California.
 
When she died at 105, her half-nieces and nephews (who had barely seen or spoken to her since the 1950s, if then) were shocked to hear they'd been left out of the will and sued. And although they may have been legally and even ethically right--as I said, Clark was clearly taken advantage of--it's hard to feel sympathetic or morally indignant on behalf of a group of people who didn't even bother to check on their elderly aunt after 9/11, or during the 2003 power outage in the heat of the summer. (The book ends before the final settlement, but you can read about it here. Essentially, the nurse was the big loser.)
 
You read this book and you want to draw some kind of lessons from Clark's life. Huguette Clark  made herself comfortable in her hospital bed for two decades, but she died more alone than she realized, having for many years trusted people who were not trustworthy. When I turned the last page, I wanted to call everyone I knew just to extract promises that they would not leave me alone in a dark apartment in my old age. I thought, she should have gotten out more. She shouldn't have isolated herself. But that's not a rational response. Clark's main problem was that she outlived everyone--her doctors, her lawyers, her dearest friends. No amount of face-to-face contact would have prevented that.
 
It is tempting to look at the end of her story and allow it to color her whole life, but that would betray years of contentment and even joy. The authors of this book, to their credit, make this point well: "She was a recluse in that she locked herself away from travel and sunsets and cafes, but a woman who leaves twenty thousand pages of affectionate correspondence is also a world traveler." ( )