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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America�??s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney�??s profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan�??s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah�??s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel�??s stunning conclusion. Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Nancy Horan's Under the Wide and Starry Sky. Advance praise for Loving Frank: �??Loving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. It�??s mesmerizing and fascinating�??filled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years ago�??all gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.�?� �??Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light �??This graceful, assured first novel tells the remarkable story of the long-lived affair between Frank Lloyd Wright, a passionate and impossible figure, and Mamah Cheney, a married woman whom Wright beguiled and led beyond the restraint of convention. It is engrossing, provocative reading.�?� �??�??Scott Turow �??It takes great courage to write a novel about historical people, and in particular to give voice to someone as mythic as Frank Lloyd Wright. This beautifully written novel about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright�??s love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.�?� �??�??Jane Hamilton �??I admire this novel, adore this novel, for so many reasons: The intelligence and lyricism of the prose. The attention to period detail. The epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head and heart and soul since reading this… (more)
User reviews
It is Mamah's character that is the most interesting. She is embracing the emerging women's movement and feels that she is seeking freedom from the traditional role of a woman; however, her life revolves around FLW. Everything she does from leaving her children, moving to Europe, moving back to Wisconsin, living in a house with no heat doesn't seem like freedom but rather a warped dependence and need to be with someone greater than herself. At one time, Mamah finds herself outside in deep snow where she is "knee-deep and snow blind" -- pretty much sums up her life experience.
This book is so well written that one can easily envision the sometimes beautiful and sometimes bleak settings and one can feel the tension between the characters come right off the page. I read this for a book club and our discussion was one of the best ever; I would highly recommend this book. It is not only a book about FLW, but also a book about society's view of women during this time period.
Another major disappointment is what I call the “evening news effect.” Due to the limited amount of primary source info available (Horan stipulates to just how little in an important endnote), Horan apparently has attempted to flesh out the story by dumping everything she turned up in the course of her research into the story, no matter how irrelevant. Thus we are forced to endure scenes, pages, chapters of information (she planted a garden! her daughter was constipated on the train to Colorado!) that add neither to the story nor our understanding of Mamah’s character.
Perhaps the most distracting flaw (for me), however, was the lack of insight that the book provided into Frank Lloyd Wright’s career. Sadly, Borthwick’s life intersected the famous architects’ during what were probably the most fallow years of his career – after his vision was already shaped but before he began building some of his most spectacular edifices. We end up learning more about Wright’s sideline buying and selling Japanese prints than we do of his architectural career. As depicted by the author, Wright comes off as rather whiny, spoiled, and overbearing … but, again, to what extent is this perception shaped by the intent and/or prose of the author? There’s no way to know.
Ultimately, found myself resenting the fact that such an extraordinary life (wealthy, educated, travelled the world, hobnobbed with influential people) was wasted on such an ordinary woman. Would have been a much more exciting life, not to mention a much more exciting book, if Mamah had taken more advantage of the opportunities that her life afforded her.
I wanted to like this book because the writing was stellar and the subject matter fascinating.
But, I simply could not enjoy the tale of two very self
Set in the early 1900's, Mameh was the wife of one of Frank's clients. She fell in love because she simply was "not fulfilled", "not happy". Poor Mameh, living a life of a rich papered lady. Alas, she had so many luxuries and the time for self absorption that many lessor folk on the hierarchy of life did not.
Frank, was by all accounts a cad, reckless in his spending and womanizing, he used more people than the houses he built.
In the end, I could not love Frank...or Mameh.
"I have been standing on the
"only true love is free love."
A novel that is loosely historical and extremely well written can be highly successful. The book's page-turning story captivates readers, who
Ultimately, therefore, "Loving Frank" ends up in the land of "genre limbo." You pick up the book because you want to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress Mamah (pronounced May-muh) Cheney, but the book isn't really a biography -- it's marketed as fiction heavily interspersed with facts (but which is which?). Conversely, if the book is truly a work of literary fiction, you expect more writing skill from the author. (You don't expect an official biography to be filled with lush prose or page-turning sizzle, but you do expect such characteristics to be present in outstanding fiction.)
Nonetheless, I recommend Horan's book for the insight it provides into the societal restrictions, changing mores and competing lifestyles that were fighting for legitimacy at the beginning of the 20th century.
I listened to this book on CD while commuting over a couple of weeks. I really enjoyed it. Although it isn't about Frank Lloyd Wright's
Interesting to note that not much has changed.
As a side note, I was impressed, too, by how closely (it seems) the author kept to the facts of the story. I enjoy historical fiction, but it annoys me when an author takes too many liberties with the historical record. Good show to Nancy Horan for telling a story well and telling it how it (probably) happened.