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Book Review No. 2: Empress Bianca by Lady Colin Campbell
PLOT
Bianca Barrett, the protagonist and daughter of a Welsh Surveyor and his Palestinian wife, becomes an “ambitious and mercenary” social climber and double murderess. Charming and well educated, Bianca marries four times and advances in wealth and social influence. With Bernardo, her first husband, Bianca has three children; they lose their son in a tragic car accident. After a divorce, she marries the rich Fredie whose family owns the Piedraplata commercial empire. Before it comes to a divorce, the second husband is shot and killed by a hitman who makes it look like a suicide. The killing is arranged by her lover, Phillipe Mahfud, and Bianca becomes the financial beneficiary. After a brief marriage to husband number three, – she had married him only to make Mahfud jealous-, she lastly marries Mahfud, a superrich Iraqi businessman and banker. When their relationship sours, the banker dies with his nurse in a mysterious fire in his apartment in the tax haven of Andorra. Bianca’s lawyers pay off the police and investigators, and the only justice that remains is in the court of public opinion.
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REVIEW:
Guilty or not guilty? Murder. A Beautiful Socialite Wife. Two Dead Rich Husbands. Billion-Dollar Fortune. Who could resist such a scrumptious story? I know I can’t. A roman a clef about the life of one of the richest women in the world, Empress Bianca is a novel that was banned for publication because of billionairess Lily Safra, the real woman the main character was based on, used all her resources and conceivable powers and stopped the novel from being printed and circulated for public consumption, more specifically, for the consumption of the international creme dela creme–the rarified social and economic circles of fund-raising socialites, and empire-building billionaires in which Lily moves.
To better understand why the book was so controversial, an excerpt from Wikipedia reads, in part: “Empress Bianca, the first novel by Lady Colin Campbell, was initially published in June, 2005. One month later, Arcadia Books, the British publisher, withdrew the book and pulped all unsold copies in reaction to a legal threat intiated on behalf of Lily Safra under her interpretation that the book was a defamatory roman a clef. After some changes the book was republished in the United States in 2008 by Dynasty Press.”
After reading the novel, I decided to get a copy of the autobiography of Mrs. Safra, Gilded Lily by Isabel Vincent. I must say that I am convinced that Bianca is Lily under the facade of fiction. But you’ll have to read both books to see what I mean. Well, fiction or nonfiction, as the case may well be, Empress Bianca is a novel that portrays the life of the fashionable set through the lucid prose of Lady Colin — the characters are relatable, story wonderfully crafted and told. In fact, there is one character I could especially relate to — Bianca’s second husband, Ferdinand Piedraplata. He’s manic-depressive like me. It’s one of those characters with whom you can identify yourself with because you are him. It was as if Lady Colin was describing me and telling my story (well, except for the dead and supper rich part).
If you are someone who likes to read social headlines or wants to know what goes in and out of the world of social-climbing murderesses, Type A bankers, and mercurial entrepreneurs, you will love this book. Alluring, charming, and scathing, Empress Bianca incredibly captures the world of a woman who has risen from a middle-class background to the uppermost echelons of international society by marrying two fabulously wealthy men, and quite possibly, by killing them, too. She might have never been tried for the controversial deaths (or murders) of her husbands, but that does make her any less innocent? A tale of intrigue, mystery, and crime of epic proportions, Empress Bianca is an “unputdownable” pageturner that will leave you wanting for a sequel.
Is she truly guilty or is as innocent as she claims to be? You decide. Get a copy.
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Will You Ever Date Someone Who Doesn’t Have Books?
I might cringe at the thought of using the “f” word given my rather conservative upbringing, but I really think this should be everyone’s major dating rule, don’t you think? There is nothing worse than dating someone, no matter how attractive, who has never read a book or who doesn’t have any books at home. John Waters used the “f” word in the most appropriate manner I can think of. Makes you wonder if your “crushes” have books in their houses. And if they do, I hope it’s not one of those books I wouldn’t think twice about burning — those rubbish chick lit or pocketbook romance stories widely distributed and read by people who don’t know any better. Paper should never be wasted on bad literature. They become nothing but wastepaper crap if that’s the case. So here’s my unsolicited dating advice: Do yourself a favor and drop him if he doesn’t have books. And even if the one you’re dating does, make sure he has the right ones. Having no books is bad, but having the wrong books is even worse. If you are a real bibliophile, being discriminate with one’s choice of dates is as important as picking the right books. But then again, it wouldn’t much matter if all you really want is to just fornicate. Good judgment is the first to go when someone wants to, ahem, f*ck.
Book Review No. 1: Mrs. Astor Regrets by Meryl Gordon
When I saw Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family on Amazon last year, I knew from the very start that I had to get it. I bought the hardcover cover and read it in just two days. The book is about the life of Brooke Astor, the wife of multimillionaire and heir to the vast Astor fortune, Vincent Astor, whose uncle John Jacob Astor, drowned together with the most famous ship in the world, The Titanic. When her husband died, she inherited a famous name and hundreds of millions worth of assets and the Vincent Astor Foundation.
She was the grande dame of New York’s high society, a philanthropist, a patroness of the arts, a fixture in the American, European, and international social circuit, and has used her fame and fortune aggressively to advance her social and charitable causes. Her name elicited fear and respect — a name that conjures up images of the Gilded Age–palatial summer cottages in Newport, masquerade parties, European crowned heads and titled aristocrats hobnobbing with American heiresses and billionaire tycoons, old money and parvenus socializing and mingling away at lavish dinner parties and debutante balls all throughout the night.
In this beautifully written and thoroughly researched biography, Meryl Gordon tells us the story of one of the most influential philanthropists in New York, who later in life until her last years was caught in the middle of the scandal of the century, a family feud between her only son Marshall, her society friends, and her grandchildren. A story which the tabloids and the papers ate up and reported in their front pages and headlines. While what has been dubbed as “The Battle of The Blue Bloods” by the publications, was ensuing, she was dying in her Park Avenue apartment “in squalor,” explained one of her grandsons after visiting her. Shocked by the living conditions of her grandmother, he decided to press charges against his own, estranged father, Brooke’s only son–who had control over the fortune of his mother–for embezzlement. Unbeknownst to the bedridden and frail Brooke, her only son and grandsons, and their friends took sides and engaged in the aristocratic war of “He said, She said” among New York’s elite.
Exciting, hilarious, heartbreaking, and oftentimes tragic, this book about a woman who once said, “If you have dogs and books, you will never get bored,” is a delicious read. Filled with overlapping stories about the great names of the century like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Kissinger, Reagan, and dela Renta, Mrs.Astor Regrets is a touching epic about love, family, betrayal, and friendship, and the destructive powers of the love for money, and greed. A gem — a nonfiction that reads like fiction.
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
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