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All the Pain That Money Can Buy: The Life of Christina Onassis

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If any life ever deserved the adjective "tumultuous", it would be that of Christina Onassis, only daughter of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and heiress to one of the world's largest fortunes -- a woman locked emotionally into the persona of a spoiled & pampered four-year old child, whose father lavished on her every luxury imaginable, while withholding the only things she valued and was desperate to obtain: his attention and affection.

While many celebrity bios are either hagiographies or hatchet jobs, this is a balanced account by a sympathetic writer who admires Christina's strengths -- her loyalty to family and culture, her determination to learn the shipping business, her clear-headed business acumen - without being blind to her flaws of character. Inexorably as in a Greek tragedy, he chronicles the personal tragedies that struck Christina, one after another, and left her, like one of her ships, rudderless and driven to self-destruction.

All the big names & all the juicy gossip are here: the rise to fortune of the egotistical Aristotle Onassis; Christina's self-absorbed mother, shipping heiress Tina Livanos; Christina's happy years in England during her mother's marriage to the Duke of Marlborough's heir; Onassis' long-time mistress, opera diva Maria Callas who was as much in thrall to Aristotle as the other women in his life; the hated step-mother Jackie Kennedy (who comes off as a greedy gold-digger); Christina's proletarian Moscow sojourn, bereft of consumer goods, with Communist third husband; her fourth husband & father of her only child Athina, the opportunistic Thierry Roussel who had another family on the side and whose mistress Gaby was befriended by Christine in a pathetic bid to keep Thierry in her life.

Extravagant and free-spending, but not generous, Christina used her wealth to bind others to her. Like a child with too many toys and a short attention span, she flitted restlessly from one enthusiasm to another. She acquired - and discarded -- husbands with less forethought or commitment than another woman would buy a new pair of shoes.

At her summer retreat in Skorpios she hosted dozens of guests in unimaginable luxury -- as an attentive entourage. A guest who failed to join the adoring throng to greet Christine upon her noon arising, or who did not participate in one of her daily escapades with sufficient enthusiasm was likely to find his bags packed and his room assigned to a new occupant.

Her oldest friends, in the end, stayed by her side because she paid them handsomely to do so. By the time she was thirty Christine knew and accepted that her companions were interested only in her money, but it did not occur to her that money was all she had to give. Under the external trappings of designer clothes and priceless jewellery was a hollow shell. Being the richest woman in the world had become an end in itself. Christina's daily pleasure was to read her press clippings and file them in her scrap books.

"All the Pain Money Can Buy" is a morality tale of a sad little girl with too many toys, but without the inner resources to understand that happiness must come from within ourselves.

All the Pain Money Can Buy: The Life of Christine Onassis

Very good read a sad look at a life that was crippled by fortune and lack of self love.It just proves Money doesn't buy happiness.

A great book - lots of action and interest in the jetset society of the early 70s, well recomemded