Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.35 You Save: $11.65 (78%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Loving Frank: A Novel
Book Review: Flight as a Response to Stifling Patriarchy
Summary: 5 Stars
Everyone wonders how Maymah (may-muh) Cheney could have left her husband and children to run away with Frank Lloyd Wright. The answer is that she wanted to be a "person". A married woman of that time entered into a role that was prescribed by the church and by the patriarchy. She could not be herself, and she most certainly had to play the "role" of dutiful wife. For a woman who was educated and intelligent enough to question the ruling paradigms, it was immensely suffocating.
Maymuh is like the main character of =The French Lieutenant's Woman=. Once you do something big that is a serious break with convention, such as leave your husband and children or get pregnant out of wedlock, then you are shunned by the patriarchy and the church and the women who support patriarchy. Then, since you are now in a wasteland, outside of mainstream society, you are finally free to make your own decisions and grow as a person.
Nothing has changed. It is the same way now, especially during the ascendancy of evangelical fundamentalism during the Bush administration. Women are still put into the same "roles" that Maymah was in, they are discouraged from making their own reproductive decisions, and premarital sex for women is stigmatized. Women are still regarded as sexual objects and caretakers only, virgins or whores, and they are discouraged from questioning the patriarchy.
These attitudes hurt all of us, not just women. They warp children and women, and they keep men from experiencing the love of a woman that is freely given, not coerced.
Maymah loved her children. She wanted them to have, as an example, a mother who was living an authentic life. Still, the book addressed the "cost" of Loving Frank: not being able to see her children whenever she wanted, being shunned by society, and finding out that Frank had some flaws that were hard for her to live with.
Maymah is interesting only because she refused to follow the rules that kept her from being a person. If she had stayed in the role that the culture assigned, we wouldn't be reading about her at all.
Book Review: Fabulous read!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
WOW!
I do not know if I will be able to review this book properly or give it all the props it deserves. This is a time when I wish I was really good with words and fully express how great this book was and how it really touched me. I guess, those words will have to be enough. I just hope they do it justice.
I have been wanting to read this for some time, as I am quite fascinated with Frank Lloyd Wright, but know virtually nothing about him except that he was a BRILLIANT architect in a time when people wanted gaudy and pretension and not brilliance.
To some extent, this story is about him. And what he was about, and his total and complete passion with building and the lines and spaces he was obsessed with. But, this story is mostly about Mamah (MAY-mah)Borthwick Cheney, a lovely HIGHLY-EDUCATED (in a time when women just weren't educated at this level as a rule, and gifted with languages) society woman, who (when her husband suggests they build a new house) meets and then falls in love with FLW and engages in an affair with him. This book is the story of their love affair and how it completely and utterly shocked the world and forever changed their lives and those who were in it.
Weaving fact and fiction together masterfully, the author uses what she researched and what she made up very well. Without the notes at the end telling you what is fact and what is fiction, you would believe it was totally fact. And for the most part, it is. People are added here and there to fill in the gaps, but this IS a true story. These two people existed (though little is found about Mamah in FLW's stories at his houses and workshop)and loved in a time when loving outside of marriage was a HUGE taboo. I completely fell under the spell of this book and it has stayed with me for days since. I just cannot get this remarkable woman out of my mind. And why I cannot agree with WHAT she did, I totally understand WHY she did what she did. What wouldn't we do for true, complete love??
FABULOUS READ!!!!!!
Book Review: Brilliant writing; a truly tragic ending.
Summary: 5 Stars
I live in NY and have been to the Guggenheim Museum several times. I knew it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and knew a little about him, mostly about his organic approach to architecture. This book is the story of Wright's love affair with Mameh Borthwick Cheney, an affair that had tragic consequences.
In 1903 Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to design and build a house for Edwin and Mameh Cheney. The two began an affair and in 1907 they left their respective spouses and children and ran off to Europe, becoming the fodder for scandal sheets for many years.
Very little is known about Mameh Borthwick, few pictures of her survive and many of her writings have disappeared, but Nancy Horan has done a remarkable job in creating a fully realized character in this fictionalized account of her life with Wright. Mameh was an extremely bright woman, educated, fluent in several languages and a firm supporter of the burgeoning Woman's Suffrage movement. Living within the confines and mores in the early 20th century seemed to stifle her and she felt that she was not living her life but observing it passing her by. In Frank Lloyd Wright Mameh felt she had found her soul mate and was willing to give up her marriage and family in order to be with him. They lived in Europe and returned to Wisconsin where Wright built his famous home Taliesin, where after several years their life together came to a startling ending.
I was very taken by this book almost from the start, despite the fact that in general I don't like books about adultery. Although the book is a love story it is in no way a romance book, it is about the genius of the egotistical Wright but more so it is Mameh's story that will captivate you, in particular her naiveté in believing that her choice would eventually be accepted by society and her family. The ending is shocking and made me cry, not something I do often while reading. This was a very compelling story and beautifully written, and I recommend it very highly.
Book Review: We are what we appreciate
Summary: 5 Stars
Frank Lloyd Wright held that modern ornamentation, circa. 1900, was a burlesque of the beautiful. This is historical fiction. The story of the characters is known by the reader in advance. The question is, what does the writer do with the material. Is it compelling?
Genius carries with it the ability to focus, the ability to enchant. A philanderer will claim his existence is stultifying in order to woo someone. The novelist shows Frank Lloyd Wright exhibiting the above-noted qualities. Wright's knowledge of Japanese art is addressed in the novel.
It is related that Mamah wrote in her diary that it isn't sufficient to be a mother. A strength of the book is the novelist's portrayal of Mamah as possessing consciousness of self. Arguably a character with insight is always more interesting to read about than someone with sheep-like characteristics.
Frank and Mamah, leaving their families, travel in Europe for more than a year. They see Boito's MEFISTOFELE. Mamah is obsessed with Goethe. Reports of Frank and Mamah in the press cause Mamah to feel ashamed. Frank tells her that finding her was like finding a safe place to think again. When Frank returns to the U.S., Mamh moves to Germany for a period. Subsequent events won't be detailed here.
The book sketches the qualities and the character of the lesser known of the two people involved in the great drama, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, effectively. I was interested to learn in the Afterward by the writer that she had lived in Oak Park and geographical proximity gave rise to her interest in Wright's career. The author advises that she had to make a greater effort to find out about Mamah Cheney because there was little about her in the published record.
Book Review: Page-Turning Read and Wright on the Money
Summary: 5 Stars
Loving Frank is a treasure. This book is more than the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, Mamah Borthwick, it is the story of a woman, who could be any one of us, trying to make her peace with her life, her surroundings, and her relationships. The text is beautifully written, there is not a word written that does not have a reason for being there.
I found both lead characters completely believable and sympathetic. It gives me tremendous hope that a contemporary writer, Horan, can write so generously on the subject of a woman's struggle with the role of motherhood. For those of the reviewers who dare to suggest that Mamah, in her time, would not have felt what Horan portrays her as feeling, I say, "hogwash." Don't think for a minute that the women of every generation have had and continue to have the feelings expressed by Mamah Borthwick. It was the women from her generation, thinking outside their roles as mothers, that got women the vote for goodness sake?!
Agree with Mamah's decisions or not, you can clearly understand the reasons she does what she does as well as her torment over the results of her choices. Mamah makes no apologies to society for her choices nor does she ask for any sympathy, she clearly just wants to BE. She's even enlightened enough to know that although she aches for her children, it is best to leave them to their daily life without her. She will have them in her life as they allow and will not place her own needs above theirs. Truly enlightened, if you ask me.
Do not this miss the beautifully written, thought-provoking triumph.