I have to admit I was on the waiting list for this book so long I gave up and got the audiobook. This is a biography of a child born in the Gilded Age to a family as wealthy as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, or Astors. Her father W. A. Clark was a contemporary of them all. Huguette Clark was the daughter of W.A. and his second wife, Anna Eugenia La Chapelle. She was raised in the Clark mansion in New York City that took up a whole city block. However upon the death of her father she and her mother moved to apartments on 5th Avenue. Once her mother died, Huguette stayed there until she was taken to hospital on a stretcher in 1991 and there she should live for the next twenty years until her death. Along the way she was an interesting character given to childlike indulgences (dolls, dollhouses) and reclusiveness. Her life was filled with the best of the best – master art works on the walls, mansions not visited for decades stood at 48 hour readiness should she want to appear. She owned jewels that would stun Tiffanys, had not just one but two Stradivarius violins and more. Her life saw the Empire State Building go up where the Astor house once stood and the World Trade Center towers come down in 2001. The history seen and owned by her is astounding. Yet I don’t think she was ever happy nor do I think I would have particularly liked her as a person. BUT I do not think she deserved the treatment she got in her old age.
Mary Louise Eklund 