Loving Frank: A Novel |
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| Title: | Loving Frank: A Novel |
| Author: | Nancy Horan |
| Publisher: | Ballantine Books |
| Type: | Book / Paperback |
| Publication Date: | 08 April, 2008 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0345495004 / 9780345495006 |
| List Price: | $14.00 |
| You Save: | $3.92 |
| Amazon Price: | $10.08 |
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This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $5.87.
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
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.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, August 2007: It's a rare treasure to find a historically imagined novel that is at once fully versed in the facts and unafraid of weaving those truths into a story that dares to explore the unanswered questions. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. Mamah's bright, earnest spirit is particularly tender in the context of her time and place, which afforded her little opportunity to realize the intellectual life for which she yearned. Loving Frank is a remarkable literary achievement, tenderly acute and even-handed in even the most heartbreaking moments, and an auspicious debut from a writer to watch. --Anne Bartholomew
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Customer Reviews:
• Pleasantly Surprised
08 March, 2010
This book held a huge surprise for me at the end (don't worry I won't ruin it for you). I read this book hoping to gain a greater insight into the life of Frank Lloyd Wright what I didn't expect was the subsequent focus on the feminist movement in the early 1900's. I did enjoy the book and did enjoy the very humanist nature surrounding the characters. If you have an image in your head of what Frank Lloyd Wright was like you may want to set that aside, as this book does bring to light many of the flaws present within Frank Lloyd Wright's character. This is not a book about Frank Lloyd Wright however, it is about an affair with a women who traveled the world with him and resided in his home. I greatly appreciated the use of actual news clippings and articles throughout the book. They allowed a very real picture to be drawn as to what these individuals were experiencing.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Loving Frank
19 March, 2010
A great love story!! A great story about the beginnings of the Woman's Movement. A book that's hard to put down till you finish it!
- Amazon Customer Review
• Loving Frank, Losing Mamah...
05 March, 2010
[ASIN:1440149577 Bread of Shame, a literary novel by Marjorie Meyerle] ]Loving Frank, while an interesting interpretation of Frank Lloyd Wright's and Mamah Cheney's life together, is far from satisfying in its psychological exploration of them and the times. Perhaps it is too easy for today's historical writers to serve up subjects of historical interest to book clubs with some members members starving for the sensation that what they're reading contains more than the psychological insight of say, literary fiction. There are those who yearn for facts or information about historical figures more than the wisdom implicit in well crafted, intelligent fiction. Moreover, as in the case of Nancy Horan's book, we see language and a narrative thrust that are less than compelling. While not a bad book, it is mediocre, kitchen fiction providing little insight into the complicated protagonists. Wright emerges as a narcissist, which he may well have been, but Mamah fares no better. While it is not essential that the reader like the main characters, in my mind it is necessary that we see in them some complexity and depth, if indeed the writer seems to imply that depth. "Show us!" I wanted to say throughout this book.
One of the most talented men of his generation and by Horan's account a devoted lover, Wright emerges as partially developed, perhaps a womanizer, a driven narcissist. Mamah, a self-described ardent feminist and intellectual, presents as someone trying to justify her sexual attraction and subsequent abandonment of her husband and family. Today most of us are tolerant of adultery and accepting of the mess it causes in the lives of those involved. However, most feminists and intellectuals I know would not see in Mamah's voice a convincing feminist or a woman of much depth and complexity. Rather she emerges as dominant in her personality, an adventuress and clinging woman, and a cold, remote personality in relation to all but Frank. She is vain and shallow in that she assumes her life after leaving her family to their own devices will open up like a rare flower and that because she is aligned with one of the most fascinating men of his time that somehow doors will open for her that were previously closed. She impresses one as a woman who watched herself step onto the stage of world events, preparing to take her place alongside those deserving of the honor of fame and fortune, but instead she finds herself justifiably scorned for what she was: an interloper and a fake.
This is not to say that Mamah wasn't accomplished for a woman of her time. She was educated and informed, but one can't help but wonder how feminism really affected her life since it seems more a rationalization for her irresponsible behavior than a truthful explanation for her actions. Perhaps her dull marriage to Cheney was simply too intolerable for her to continue; perhaps she lacked the necessary inner resources to cope with her mundane life. Of course, the charismatic Wright would sweep a vain, unhappy woman off her feet. So what else is new? We all know that men can do that, owning as they did then all the power, but men can also be so easily duped by an adoring woman, such as Mamah. All this is old fodder and Horan does not impart enough insight into the attraction on either Wright's or Mamah's parts. It is if Horan understood the relationship was a result of Mamah's boredom and a casualty of her basic rejection of the conventional roles of mother and wife as much as her sexual attraction and romantic notions. The story is predictable, not unlike any story of adultery.
What hits the reader so hard is the horrible fate that awaits Mamah and her children. No foreshadowing hints at that. It is not unlike the unpredictable destinies of serial murder victims or those in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb goes off. The horrific murders and the burning of the great architectural monument to Wright's and Mamah's love are as banal and senseless as was the relationship of the two lovers. Unfortunately, I could not grieve for Mamah; she didn't arouse my sympathy because I did not view her as strong, interesting or compassionate. Instead I saw her as single minded, silly and unrepentant woman, when in fact, she should have been sorry for the devastation she caused to her husband and family, however justified she allowed it to be in her own mind. She could have at least voiced remorse; she could have respected her ex-husband enough to communicate with him, even if she chose not to live with him. These are elements that make her an unsympathetic character; that is fine, but we need to be convinced of her complexity if the book is to impart any insight.
Mostly I wish Horan's language, structure and dialogue were more developed. I felt the story unfolded in a clumsy manner, that there was too much discussion of her feminist idol and that ultimately Mamah was a boring, foolish woman not to have anticipated her isolation and rejection by society. I'd rather read historical fiction of the likes of "The Confessions of Nat Turner" by William Styron. There you have psychological complexity in the characters, vivid description, fluid language, and a strong sense of place, all of which elements I did not see here.
Marjorie Meyerle, Reviewer, Colorado
Author:Bread of Shame
- Amazon Customer Review
• Loving Frank
19 March, 2010
BEING A HUGE FAN OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S WORK I COULDN'T WAIT TO READ THIS BOOK. I KNEW LITTLE OF THE MAN OR THE WOMEN IN HIS LIFE. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING BOOKS I HAVE READ IN YEARS! PARTICULARLY, AS THE AUTHOR KNEW HIM AND THE WOMAN HE LOVED, AT THE TIME OF THIS SCANDAL. THE BOOK IS SPELL BINDING EVEN THO I KNEW HOW IT ENDED HAVING READ MUCH ABOUT HIS LIFE.
HE WAS NOT A VERY NICE MAN BUT UNDOUBTABLY A GENIUS. YOU COULD FEEL THE EMOTIONS OF THE CHARACTERS AS YOU READ THIS WONDERFULLY WRITTEN BOOK. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. I FELT SO MUCH COMPASSION FOR THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE AND THE AGONY SHE SUFFERED FOR THE LOSS OF HER CHILDREN.
THIS BOOK IS HISTORICAL AND SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN FACINATED BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Not Loving Frank
14 March, 2010
LOVING FRANK
This book was the pick for book club; otherwise, I would have never finished it. I am glad I did finish it though and found out everything that happened in this tragic love affair.
I have seen TV shows and heard about Frank Lloyd Wright and the beautiful homes he created with his gift for architecture. What I didn't know was about the man himself and how he affected so many lives - not necessarily in a good way.
This is the story of his affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney. He is hired to create a home for her and her husband; long story short, the two end up in love and having an affair. Cheney leaves her husband, along with her children, to be with Wright. Wright is also married with children.
The book is good in the fact that it tells the story of the Wright/Cheney affair in detail. How the two left their spouses, children, lives to create a new one. Back in the early 1900's women hardly had any rights -- it surprised me that women didn't even have the rights to their own children. Cheney's husband kept their two children when she went off with Wright.
While full of history and the facts of lives about Wright and Cheney, I found myself plodding through this book, not caring much about any of the characters. Frank Lloyd Wright was portrayed -- and quite rightly so -- as a very selfish man, seeming to care only about his work and himself. While he seemed to love Cheney, she gave up everything to be with him and I found myself wondering if he ever really appreciated the fact that she gave up so much for him.
I generally enjoy fictional history, finding it an appealing way to find out about the past and the lives of the people involved. However, this book was a bit too tedious with cardboard characters that I found I didn't really enjoy knowing.
Thank you.
Pam
- Amazon Customer Review
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