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Loving Frank: A Novel

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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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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.

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 book; I doubt she’ll ever leave.”
–Elizabeth Berg


From the Hardcover edition.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345495006
ISBN: 0345495004
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2008-04-08
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2008-04-08
Studio: Ballantine Books


SIMILAR ITEMS:

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CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Women's Lib?
Comment: I enjoyed Loving Frank. It was a beautifully written, well done piece of historical fiction. What I didn't like was the central characters. Mamah Cheney gives up her life literally as we find out for Frank Lloyd Wright and the "priveledge" of being his mistress. She selfishly leaves her young children subjecting her family and sister to ridicule and social ostracisim while she is galavanting across Europe with Frank enjoying the Tuscan sun and literary conversations with her new found feminist friends. It's hard to like a woman or man "who follows their heart" but at the expense of innocent people like their children or spouses. It's interesting to note the genius of FLW and how this gives him some kind of "free pass" with Mamah and others who just accept his eccentricities and ego mania. It's also interesting to note that Mameh never achieves her independence and intellectual potential that the reader is led to believe is her primary motivation for loving Frank. In the end she is nothing short of a housewife contending with a cranky overbearing mother in law at Franks dream home Taliesan and that makes the true ending of this novel even more difficult for the reader to bear. Loving Frank is a nice piece of historical fiction with interesting characters and beautiful writing even if the characters are not wholly likeable.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Love me that "Loving Frank"
Comment: Although the story is fictionalized, there was enough fidelity to the historic events to satisfy me. I knew the basic outline of his early life, and the facts seemed accurate. I found myself despising both of them for their selfishness, yet feeling sad at the tragedy that ensued as a result of their actions. A writer who can rouse your emotions has done a good job!

Customer Rating:
Summary: Fair enough, but with problems...
Comment: I'm sorry to say this book disappointed me a little. The main character Mamah Borthwick, the woman with whom Frank Lloyd Wright had a long extra-marital affair, is interesting enough, as are the times, however she seemed so blind to her own motives that I became frustrated with her. Frank himself is portrayed as such an unlikeable man (albeit with undeniable genius) that I couldn't see why Mamah would pay such an enormous price to be with him, virtually abandoning her children, destroying her reputation, and causing such harm to her husband and her sister. Genius alone didn't seem credible, nor did her assertion that she'd finally found someone she could talk to, someone who understood her. It smacked of the cliche.

The threads of Ayn Rand's objectivism run through the fabric of this novel, and the end result is that the characters, in this author's opinion, seem adolescent and narcissistic, but even worse, in terms of fictional characters, they are blind to their own flaws. There are moments when they do take tiny peeks into their own souls, such as when Mamah discovers Wright's slipshod money management and the callous way in which he accumulates things "of great beauty" but never pays, leaving others to suffer for his pleasure. However, these seem rather tacked on, as though an editor suggested they ought to be there, rather than coming organically from the author's own experience of the characters.

Finally, AND THERE IS A SPOILER HERE - I found the point of view flawed. The book is told in free indirect discourse, from Mamah's POV, which works well for almost the entire narrative -- right up until the point Mamah dies. Then it becomes...ahem...inconvenient, for obvious reasons, and the point of view shifts for the last two chapters to focus on Frank. I found this jarring and unsatisfying. In reading the author notes at the end I learned that Horan wrote the book twice, and the first time there were four points of view. She states it wasn't a very good book. Well, perhaps four was too many points of view but, in my opinion, she didn't quite solve the problem in the final version. Pity, because Horan shows much promise.

Having said all that, there are some moments of lovely writing and insight, such as when, near the end of the book, Mamah describes Wright as someone who, "had come to mistake his gift for the whole of his character."

As first novels go, it's pretty good, but I suspect some experience will serve her well. I look forward to seeing what she does in a few years.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect condition
Comment: Book came in perfect condition and much quicker than expected. Also....a great read! There are questions in the back for a book club discussion also.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A very satisfying, intriquing, page-turning read....
Comment: This is a very interesting account, a combination of what is known historically and what is plausible supposition based upon research. It takes a truly gifted writer to make a success of something like this - it took Horan seven years to write the book, and it was time well spent, as the truth, more interesting than fiction, linked with the fiction is really melded seamlessly. Horan doesn't spare Frank Lloyd Wright, whose arrogance, self-indulgence and disdain for those less talented comprise a character who is very difficult to warm to. Sometimes you just can't imagine how it would be possible to love such a selfish boor - and, what's more, to leave one's children and relatives and have no regard at all for what would happen in their lives as a result. That's what keeps the pages turning right up to the end.

You'll come away with a different view of FLW and you can't help but feel strongly that no matter what the degree of talent a person possesses, it doesn't excuse him for all the havoc he wreaks in the lives of those around him. He does love Mamah, though, and there are moments of intense sweetness and caring - and there must have been enough of them to cement her attachment.

It's great to read a really different book from time to time - it's difficult to find a unique story these days - one that doesn't really ask you to make a judgment. This love affair just was, and it was at a time in history when there were very strong feelings about women who showed any tendencies to stray from the established path. It took a ton of courage to follow one's heart in those days, as women were meant to sacrifice their own hopes and dreams in favor of just about everyone else. So, as you read this book, you'll find yourself saluting Mamah's chutzpah and, at the same time, wondering how on earth she could bring herself to do the things she did. And, you'll hate Frank one minute, and shake your head the next, wondering how he became the kind of person he was.

I'll remember Loving Frank, and put it on the shelf of those I plan to read again in my old, old age.

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