Customer Reviews

Loving Frank

5 star:		(174)
4 star:		(134)
3 star:		(49)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I have studied the work and bio of Frank Lloyd Wright for many years, even traveling to his Western headquarters, Taliesen West, and touring homes he built in four cities. I was well aware of his strengths and faults, but little has been published about the women in his wife, other than his domineering, smothering mother and his strident, domineering third (and last) wife. (I'm counting Mamah Borthwick, his lover for about a half-dozen years, as a second wife, since they would have married if his first wife had granted him a divorce; he and Borthwick lived together for several years).

Wright's towering ego is well known and well documented. By choosing to look at Wright and his work through the eyes of Mamah, his lover, in this fictionalized historical tale, Horan brings new insight into the demons and angels that inspired his vision. Wright's well-documented narcissism and inability to control himself personally is examined as well, but not as the fatal flaws offered by most biographers, but as components of an immensely complex and genius personality.

Mamah's (first) husband was first to see Wright's vision but Mamah was the one to embrace it wholly as Wright set about building them a home in Oak Park, not far from his own house. Wright was a star on the rise at that time, accepting commissions almost faster than he could manage them, but the affair he and Mamah embarked upon, which caused her to abandon her children, led to considerable scandal and major setbacks to his business.

Mamah was a recognized scholar and intellect until she was subsumed into a loveless marriage by the conventions of the time. In Wright she found the outlet for her passions and the independence she longed for, and the support and acceptance to rebuild her professional life, which became linked with that of the feminist Swedish scholar Ellen Keyes. Mamah's story, and that of the feminists of her time, is largely lost to history, and for reminding us of those seminal and important figures alone Horan deserves a deep bow.

Horan's work also exumes many litle-known facts about Wright and his times: his love for rural Wisconsin, where he grew up; his fascination with Japan and business in buying and selling Japanese antiguities; and his admiration for the classic Tuscan homes of northern Italy. As this book documents the times in which Wright was shaping his own vision with the help and guidance of Mamah, we can better understand the architecture for which he became so famous.

For those familiar with Wrights biography, the tragic end to his and mamah's affair is well known. For others, it will come as a shock. Horan is simply masterful in describing the events as they must have occurred.

I enjoyed the book tremendously, but I have one major quibble: Horan offers little documentation for her narrative for the reader who might want to learn as much as she does. As one generally familiar with the story I find it authemtic, but an appendix elaborating on the sources Horan used would add to the book's credibility.

Frank Lloyd Wright was, and is, considered by many to be an architectural visionary. His Prarie homes were organic in nature and designed to blend into the landscape rather than compete with it.

Frank himself could hardly be considered as a man who "blended into the landscape" and his unconventional affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, a married woman with two children, resulted in tragedy both personal and professional

Author Nancy Horan's historical novel takes you into the lives and minds of this unusual couple and explores their relationship and its effect the people who loved them as well as those on the periphery of their passion.

We are drawn into the inner thoughts of Mameh, an accomplished woman in her own right.....college graduate, fluent in several languages.....and her attempt to "stop standing on the side of life watching it float by" and instead "swim in the river and feel it's current". In an era when women were expected to quash any desire for personal growth and "act happy", Mameh's personal conflict forced her to make choices that provided temporary satisfaction, but were ultimately disasterous.

Could it be that you, like me, will become so consumed by Horan's vivid portrayal of this couple that you will find yourself searching the internet for more information about "what happened after" Horan's tale ends.

No matter your allegiance to the narcissistic genius who was Frank Lloyd Wright, it is Mamah Cheney who will mesmerize you with her intelligence, sensitivity and straightforward innocence. To dare to write such a complicated true story and to succeed so masterfully is a feat few authors can achieve. Nancy Horan is a remarkably gifted writer who brings you close to the complex love affair between Mamah and Frank and grips you with her elqouent prose. I have not enjoyed a book as much in a very long time. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to dive into an extremely satisfying novel and not emerge from its spell until you turn the last page.

For several weeks this book was on the best seller list and I anticipated reading it. With little knowledge of Frank Lloyd Wright I also anticipated learning something about his life and career. To the extent that I gained basic knowledge about FLW and his relationship with Mamah Cheney, the book was successful.

In some regards I found the depiction of Mamah like many historical novels that impose 21st century feelings and values on 19th century women. Since this is a true story, that statement cannot be totally true. However, I think that the author makes Mamah much more modern in her thinkings and opinions than she probably was in life.

While I thought the book was well written, somewhere along the line I missed what drew Mamah Cheney to FLW and what compeled her to have such undying love and to give up so much for "the man she loved." Maybe it was just that she wanted to get out of her relationship with Edward more so than a love for Frank. Perhaps with maturity and looking back in hind sight its easy to second guess Mamah's action. But she gave much more than he did. Consistent with FLW not paying his bills and taking advantage of friends, in a sense he took advantage of Mamah. He was able to go back and forth between his children and Mamah while she essentially burned her bridges. I question to what extent he truly loved a woman to ask her to do what she did. I certainly did not come away from this novel liking FLW.

I found Mamah to be a classic of a woman having an affair with a married man and not realizing that she was being screwed both figuratively and literally. Without Frank she literally had no place to go -no friends, no family. She gave up her children and took advantage of her sister who devoted her life to taking care of Mamah's children to be with Frank. Was the fox really worth the chase? When Mamah goes back to her house near the end of the novel I got the distinct feeling that she really second guessed her decision and the choices she made.

While other readers found this book a page turner, I labored to finish it. Unaware of Mamah's final demise, I was surprised and saddened by the ending. Even in the end, Mamah got the short end of the stick while Frank was able to go on and have other relationships and other women. He stayed on at his Taliesin. I wonder if FLW ever really realized the extent of Mamah's devotion and what she gave up for him.

In 1972, I attended a conference at Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house, Taliesin, and I've carried a vision of it ever since: its startlingly flat planes, the Oriental lines of its roofs, the way it snugs into the side of a Wisconsin hill. And indoors, the Zen-like simplicity of furnishings, the wide windows that open onto green landscape, and the glowing walls that seem to shimmer with their own inner light. I can understand why Mamah Borthwick Cheney fell in love with its architect and loved him with an outrageous passion until she died. I may have been a little in love with him myself when I left that remarkable house.

Loving Frank is a fictional recreation of the true story of the adulterous affair with Wright that pulled Mamah Cheney away from her young children, her husband, and their prosperous, comfortable life in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright himself was married, the father of six children, and a rising young architect. The two were drawn together in 1903 when Wright designed a house for the Cheneys.

Mamah Borthwick was a scholar and feminist when she married Edwin Cheney, and one of the things Nancy Horan does best in this tumultuous novel is to show how the egotistical, charismatic Wright reawakens her desire to be more than simply a mother and wife-to dream dreams impossible for those whose existences are constrained by convention. Horan also brings to life Mamah's terrible dilemma: how to create and sustain a life based on passion when that means giving up her two children, whom she also deeply loves. And Horan tellingly illuminates the conflicted relationship between Mamah and Ellen Key, a Swedish feminist and writer whose liberal ideas about sex, marriage, and child-care were far ahead of her time.

Loving Frank is all the more remarkable because it is Nancy Horan's first novel. The pace and intensity may lag a bit in the middle and drop off after the tragic events of 1914. And I might have wished for a more detailed documentation of sources. Still, these are minor reservations about what is overall a fine achievement, a rich, compellingly imaginative work that allows us to see into the private emotional lives of two intriguing people: the man who significantly influenced American architecture for over fifty years, and the woman who loved him. It's a book that will be remembered.

Susan Wittig Albert is the author of several historical novels, including Death on the Lizard (Robin Paige Victorian Mysteries, No. 12). A longer version of this review may be read on the Story Circle Book Review website.

I enjoyed this book for rounding out my sense of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who was his lover and sometime soul mate for many years. It's the most pleasant way I know to bring these two powerful people to life in your mind.

Most novels deal with romance, hope, and redemption. Loving Frank is quite different because it displays a tragedy based on imagining the relationship between two real people, the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the wife of one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who left her husband and family to live with Wright. Beyond a few scraps of writing, we know little about Mamah Borthwick Cheney other than what a few friends and the excesses of journalists said about her. Even though I've read several books about Wright, I didn't get much of a sense about Mamah until reading this book. I thought that Nancy Horan did a fine job of bringing Mamah to life by imputing reasonable motives to her for the actions she is known to have taken.

Frank Lloyd Wright had a reputation for romancing the wives of his clients, but only Mamah left home and hearth for him . . . despite having a comfortable marriage and two children. Mamah appears to have seen this as an opportunity to become a fulfilled person by having a professional (she was a translator of feminist literature) and a personal life (with Frank) that was continually stimulating.

Why, then, is this a tragedy? Well, Mamah didn't end up doing nearly as much professionally as she hoped, and Wright was often not around . . . or not behaving as he should have. In addition, Mamah ended up being characterized by the press as a scarlet woman in a way that shamed all of her family and friends. Her leaving her family affected her children and herself in fundamental ways as well . . . the loss was substantial. Relations with her author were also strained. And her life ended in a tragic way. If you want to know more about the real events, I recommend Death in a Prairie House by William R. Drennan.

You can visit Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois as it was constituted in 1909 when he left his family to be with Mamah. Her home is also nearby. In addition, you can tour Taliesin near Spring Green, Wisconsin to help you imagine what their life was like. I have been to all three locations and felt that background helped make the book more real to me.

In the end, I found myself wondering what Mamah would have to say about her life if she could be an independent observer. Was it worth it? Should she have chosen some other path?

Those who are looking for lots of romance between the two will be disappointed in the book. The scenes where both appear are often more about ideas and culture than they are about the relationship.

If you have Frank Lloyd Wright on a pedestal because he was a great architect, this book will help you see his feet of clay.

"Loving Frank" was riveting from start to finish, both for the insight into Frank Lloyd Wright and the complex dilemma presented of a turn-of-the-century woman longing for 21st century freedoms.

Mamah Borthwick was educated and intelligent, but fell into the trap of marrying Edwin Cheney, a good but boring man. In Wright she felt she had found her intellectual soulmate, but the mores of the time rendered her decisions disastrous. Even from a 21st century perspective, however, I was troubled about her decisions, especially to leave her children with a friend to follow Frank to Europe. Mamah's and Frank's belief that someday their children would appreciate that their parents chose the free life struck me as dangerously naive. One of the great strengths of Horan's novel is that she presents this dilemma in all its complexity, most notably through the character of Lizzie, Mamah's sister.

There was also enough about Wright's architecture in the novel to send me off to the library for photos of his early Chicago houses. They were indeed revolutionary for their time, with long and low lines, capturing space and light in ways never before contemplated. The Cheney home was one of the few smaller prarie houses, of wood and brick melting into the lush greenery that surrounds it. You'll want to see it after you finish this fascinating novel.

I really don't like giving three-star reviews, because it feels so wishy-washy, but in this case it is appropriate because I had incredibly mixed feelings about "Loving Frank." Reading this novel was a real roller-coaster ride for me. I now wish I had read it with a book club because I am sure sharp opinions would fly, making for an interesting discussion.

Most problematically, I did not really buy the relationship between Mamah and Frank, especially in the beginning. The author did not adequately convey their passion, their connection, as something that was worth tearing their lives and families apart to allow them to be together.

As I plodded on, Mamah's character study did grow on me, even though the decisions she made were utterly despicable in so many ways. I became interested in this woman though, someone who had been derided by headlines but whose story was eventually lost from the public consciousness.

Just when I had started to care about Mamah, and wondered how her story would all turn out, the ending galloped up and totally blindsided me. (I read the book on the Kindle so I didn't realize how close I was to the conclusion.) Now admittedly, Nancy Horan had to fit her plot around the facts of history, but when I found out Mamah's story ended, I could not imagine anyone looking at this narrative and deciding to construct a romantic novel about it.

I was tempted to give the book two stars, but the truth is that after recovering from the punch to the gut that concludes this story, I have found that I am interested in learning more about how Mamah fits into Frank Lloyd Wright's larger life story. "Loving Frank" is told from Mamah's point of view, and her relationship with Frank did last the rest of her life. Frank, however, lived another 45 years and experienced a lot more drama around his work, his artist colony at Taliesin, and eventual relationships with two more wives. I plan to read The Women: A Novel by T. C. Boyle, another account of Wright's love life, to get the bigger picture. I have a feeling that Mamah's choices and sacrifices will look ever more questionable once we see Wright through a more objective perspective than the filter of Mamah's loving adoration.

Still, credit goes out to Nancy Horan for bringing the human side of Frank Lloyd Wright's history to life, and for the illumination of the fascinating and flawed Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

I was a little skeptical of this novel at first ... I was worried it would be a lurid tell-all. What a relief to read a book that focused on the internal struggles of a woman in the early 1900s trying to follow not only her heart but her own interests and the price she was forced to pay to do so. How many of us, even today, could do what she did ...would we want to? These are not individuals to be held up as examples of family values....matter of fact, I didn't like them at all. Yet it was fascinating to read of the choices these two made completely out of step with the norms of their time and how others around them were affected and chose to handle the consequences of FLW and Mamah's actions. If FLW never entered Mamah's life, would she have remained with Edwin and her children never to pursue her work with Ellen Key? Was Ellen's influence a direct response to the situation she found herself with her relationship to FLW? These are questions ripe for book clubs. The research involved in this project was impressive...weaving documented fact with fiction. I feel the author did a great job capturing the internal struggles that Mamah must have been going through. As I started the book I thought the title referred to the affair between Mamah and FLW ...how and why they came to love each other. However, after finishing this book, I believe the title was a reference to the costs to those affected by `Loving Frank'...which was much more interesting.

It happens every day: two individuals fall in love, though each is married to another. Secrets are discovered, lives change, families are broken apart. But when one of the two is a local celebrity, the affair also makes daily headlines. What must Life be like when you are true to your heart, but the whole world seems to be conspiring against you and your partner? Why must your every move be broadcast to the American public?

This fictionalized account -- for we'll never know the complete real-life particulars -- documents the relationship of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah is a dutiful wife and mother of two, a University of Michigan graduate and a socially active and intelligent woman. When she and her husband decide to build their own house in Oak Park, Illinois, they hire local architect Frank Wright to design their prairie-style home. In the process, Mamah and Frank begin to spend time together, sharing meaningful conversations that turn into something quite different. Frank is married and has six children of his own, and his wife refuses to grant him a divorce. The two lovers travel to Europe and eventually return to settle down near Wright's first home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While Frank focuses on architecture, Mamah writes and translates Swedish feminist philosophy into American English. They see their children from time to time. Discounting some financial difficulties, they seem to have created an idyllic existence together. For a time.

I toured the Taliesin grounds (but not the residence) in Wisconsin, in the late 1990s. I vaguely remember being told about what happened there in 1914, but only in general terms. It's such a beautiful place -- too restful to be associated with such a horrible tragedy. Now that I have read "Loving Frank," I'd like to go back. That trip will be more contemplative than my initial visit was.

This is a powerful story, told in satisfying prose. Portions of this book will stay with me forever. Thank you, Ms. Horan, for your diligence in researching the details of this story and sharing them so astutely with us. We surely look forward to your next assignment!