Empty Mansions

I have always been fascinated by American history.  I majored in history in college, and continue to read a great deal on the subject.  Therefore it was surprising that W.A. Clark was not a name that I had come across nearly as often as his contemporaries Rockefeller and Carnegie.  He was, at times, more wealthy then both of these men, and this wealth was passed on to his daughter Huguette Clark.  This nonfiction work is the result of a partnership between journalist Bill Dedman and Huguette Clark's cousin Paul Clark Newell, Jr.  Very little is known a Huguette's life, as she was notoriously shy, and later in life, agoraphobic.  It is a fascinating look what happens behind the doors of the most wealthy of the gilded age families. 

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Janet Maslin, The New York Times * St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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.

Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else.

The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic.

Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette's copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

Two for One

I hope that everyone had a great transition back into school this year, and an exciting Halloween.  I realized this morning, that I had forgotten to post my review in October, so I am going to give you two book reviews this month!

Her Fearful Symmetry

The Time Travelers Wife  is one of my favorite books, so when I found out that Audrey Niffenegger had written another book I was so excited to read it.  I was going to review this book in October for Halloween, because ghosts are at the center of this story.  The language in this book is beautiful, and the quirky characters are well developed.  Even if the storyline seems a little forced at times, you will not be able to put this book down.  I also found the surprise ending so shocking and upsetting, that it kept me awake for a number of nights afterward!  Enjoy this "haunting" read!  :)

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Following her breakout bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger returns with Her Fearful Symmetry, a haunting tale about the complications of love, identity, and sibling rivalry. The novel opens with the death of Elspeth Noblin, who bequeaths her London flat and its contents to the twin daughters of her estranged twin sister back in Chicago. These 20-year-old dilettantes, Julie and Valentina, move to London, eager to try on a new experience like one of their obsessively matched outfits. Historic Highgate Cemetery, which borders Elspeth's home, serves as an inspired setting as the twins become entwined in the lives of their neighbors: Elspeth's former lover, Robert; Martin, an agoraphobic crossword-puzzle creator; and the ethereal Elspeth herself, struggling to adjust to the afterlife. Niffenegger brings these quirky, troubled characters to marvelous life, but readers may need their own supernatural suspension of disbelief as the story winds to its twisty conclusion. --Brad Thomas Parsons

The Secret Keeper

 

Families can have very complicated relationships, and when members of the family hold secrets the complications can be even greater.  I love the slow build of this storyline, while for some it might feel rather slow paced. Through out the story you can feel the tension in the characters.  This story does a nice job of blending past and present, and you know that in the end the characters will all find a sort of closure.   If you enjoy this book you might also like The Forgotten Garden.  Enjoy!

From Booklist

Australian Morton’s (The Distant Hours, 2010) latest will appeal to fans of Daphne du Maurier, Susanna Kearsley, and Audrey Niffenegger with its immensely relatable characters, passion, mystery, and twist ending. Laurel Nicholson is a teenager when she witnesses a shocking crime: her gentle, kind mother, Dorothy, kills a man. It becomes a family secret that Laurel never divulges or tries to fathom until five decades later, when Dorothy is on her deathbed, and Laurel finds a photograph of her mother with an old friend, snapped back in 1941, when Dorothy was barely out of her teens. As Laurel begins to dig, her burning questions become, Who was Vivien Jenkins, and why was she once so important to Dorothy? With the narrative shifting between Laurel, Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy, a man who also profoundly affected Dorothy’s life long ago, both reader and Laurel breathlessly hurtle into an astounding family secret that unfolds slowly and temptingly. Despite some loose threads and rather too leisurely pacing, this is likely to keep readers reading into the wee hours. --Julie Trevelyan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Welcome Back!

I hope that everyone had a lovely summer break, and had a chance to do some reading.  We have a couple of very interesting events this month to promote reading, and I would like to take a minute to highlight them both. 

September 23rd will be the first meeting of the Parent's Association Book Club.  The meeting will be held at 8:00 in the Lindenwold library.  The first book to be discussed with be The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais.  Make sure to read this wonderful book BEFORE you see the movie!

September 26th-27th Morristown will host the first annual Festival of Books.  What an exciting event!  I hope that you had a chance to read The Price of Silence by William Cohan from my suggested summer reading list, as he will be the keynote speaker on Friday.  Jane O'Conner author of one of my FAVORITE series Fancy Nancy will also be in attendance.  Please take a moment to visit the website for more information and a complete schedule of events/authors.  I am looking forward to seeing many of you there!  http://www.morristownfestivalofbooks.org/

I had a chance to read a number of very good books this summer, and I have a great selection of websites to share with all of you this year!  Look for my first reviews beginning in October. Happy reading!

Summer Reading Resources

Wow, summer is nearly here!  I would like to thank all of you for following the blog this school year and provide you with some reading resources for the summer months.  The Peck Library will be closed, but I would encourage everyone to explore your local public libraries this summer.  In addition to books, nearly all public libraries offer special summer programing.  Theater/puppet shows, book clubs, movie nights, classes in art and writing, crafts and storytimes, and special art exhibits are all part of summer public library programing, and available for free.  Below is a list of links to local county library systems to visit for more information.  I have also posted my updated summer reading lists on the right side bar of this blog.  In addition to reading suggestions for K-8 children, I have provided lists for young adults and adults in response to requests from parents.

Enjoy your summer, and I look forward to sharing with all of you some of the great books I read this summer!

Links to local public library systems:

Morris County
Somerset County
Bergen County
Passaic and Essex Counties
Hunterdon County
Sussex County
Union County
Warren County

Middlesex: A Novel

I will admit that I was hesitant to pick up this story, given its rather sensitive subject matter.  However, I loved Jeffery Eugenides' other book The Virgin Suicides, so I decided to give it a try.  There is no doubt about it, Eugenides is a brilliant story teller.  The opening line of the book gives you a taste of where this story is going:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."

This book is much more then just the story of a hermaphrodite.  This sweeping story details a medical mystery, the immigrant experience, the race riots of the 1960s, family histories, in addition to how we continue to struggle with the definition of gender.  Many may find this book upsetting or disturbing, but I think it well worth the time to read.

From Publishers Weekly

As the Age of the Genome begins to dawn, we will, perhaps, expect our fictional protagonists to know as much about the chemical details of their ancestry as Victorian heroes knew about their estates. If so, Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) is ahead of the game. His beautifully written novel begins: "Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, 'Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites.' " The "me" of that sentence, "Cal" Stephanides, narrates his story of sexual shifts with exemplary tact, beginning with his immigrant grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty. On board the ship taking them from war-torn Turkey to America, they married-but they were brother and sister. Eugenides spends the book's first half recreating, with a fine-grained density, the Detroit of the 1920s and '30s where the immigrants settled: Ford car factories and the tiny, incipient sect of Black Muslims. Then comes Cal's story, which is necessarily interwoven with his parents' upward social trajectory. Milton, his father, takes an insurance windfall and parlays it into a fast-food hotdog empire. Meanwhile, Tessie, his wife, gives birth to a son and then a daughter-or at least, what seems to be a female baby. Genetics meets medical incompetence meets history, and Callie is left to think of her "crocus" as simply unusually long-until she reaches the age of 14. Eugenides, like Rick Moody, has an extraordinary sensitivity to the mores of our leafier suburbs, and Cal's gender confusion is blended with the story of her first love, Milton's growing political resentments and the general shedding of ethnic habits. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this book is Eugenides's ability to feel his way into the girl, Callie, and the man, Cal. It's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender. This is one determinedly literary novel that should also appeal to a large, general audience.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reading Resource Highlight

I have had lots of requests for book suggestions for children, and other resources on inspiring your children to read more.  This month I would like to highlight Reading Rockets.  This great website is offered by PBS and provides a great variety of suggested books to read, information about authors for children, helping struggling readers, and links to more great information.  Visit them today!

For more links to great reading resources, see the side bar on the right side of this blog!

Orphan Train: A Novel

I finally had a chance to read the latest book from Christina Kline, Orphan Train (author of Bird in Hand). This is the story of an unusual friendship between a teenager, Molly, in the foster care system and Vivian, an older woman, who was an orphan herself.  A large portion of the book is told in flash back form, as Vivian shares her experiences as a child when she loses her family and is forced onto an orphan train.   While the narrative sometimes feels a little forced to me, it doesn't decrease the overall emotional impact of the story.  It certainly inspired me to learn more about the orphan trains, and what happened to some of the children during this time period.  Take time to read this great book!

From Booklist:
A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian’s cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Novelist Kline (Bird in Hand, 2009) brings Vivian’s hardscrabble existence in ­Depression-era Minnesota to stunning life. Molly’s present-day story in Maine seems to pale in comparison, but as we listen to the two characters talk, we find grace and power in both of these seemingly disparate lives. Although the girls are vulnerable, left to the whims of strangers, they show courage and resourcefulness. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women. --Bridget Thoreson