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The Women Hardcover – February 10, 2009

by T. C. Boyle (Author)

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A tale inspired by the life of Frank Lloyd Wright is presented from the perspectives of four very different women who loved him and offers insight into the eminent architect's enduring struggles against conventional boundaries. 75,000 first printing.

Print length

464 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The Viking Press
Publication date

February 10, 2009
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

6.3 x 1.55 x 9.36 inches
ISBN-10

0670020419
ISBN-13

978-0670020416
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The genius of Frank Lloyd Wright was both magnetic and cruel, as evidenced by the succession of failed marriages and hot-blooded affairs depicted in this biographic reimagining that drills into Wright mythology and the dark shadows of the American dream. The narrative moves backwards in time through the accounts of four women in Wrights life: Olgivanna, the steely, grounded dancer from Montenegro; Miriam, the drug-addled narcissist from the South; Kitty, the devoted first wife; and Mamah, the beloved and murdered soul mate and intellectual companion. But the novels centerpiece is Taliesin, Wrights Oz-like Wisconsin home. The tragedies that befall Taliesin—fires, brutality—serve as proxy for Wrights inner turmoil; his deeper stirrings surface only occasionally from behind Boyles oft-overbearing depiction of Wrights women. The most engaging person is Tadashi Sato, the Japanese-American apprentice and narrator who emerges via his frequent footnotes as a complex reflection of Wrieto-san and, with his inability to remain objective and his evolving view of Wright and Wrights image, becomes the books most dynamic character. Its a lush, dense and hyperliterate book—in other words, vintage Boyle. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Boyle�s latest novel takes on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright by examining his notoriously tumultuous relationships with four women, each unique in her own histrionic way. Narrated in reverse chronological order by a fictional Japanese apprentice, the book is extremely readable and deftly builds a portrait of the artist as pure egoist. Unfortunately, the novel avoids any sustained consideration of Wright�s relationship to his art�a passion arguably more important in forming his genius than any of the women in his life were. Still, it proves an effective showcase for Boyle�s own strengths as a craftsman. His prose is full of vivid descriptions and turns of phrase that pop with a preternatural precision.
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

From Bookmarks Magazine

T. C. Boyle has written many biographical novels, but critics weren't sure that this effort fully succeeds. All agreed that Boyle is a graceful stylist whose writing, noted the Washington Post, "will reward you in the last scene of this altogether predictable and (sometimes deliciously) overwrought novel." While mostly adhering to the facts, melodramatic it is. That didn't seem to be the major problem, though. Many reviewers thought that the fictional narrator Tadashi Sato, writing a biography of his mentor with limited knowledge, was a curious, unnecessary device. Critics also faulted Boyle's decision to tell the story backward. Finally, those perhaps hoping for a different book complained that Boyle fails to explore Wright's intellectual genius. But "love, not architecture, is the focus here," noted the New York Times Book Review -- which readers should know going in.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

About the Author

T. C. Boyle is the author of eleven novels, including World's End (winner of the PEN/FaulknerAward), Drop City (a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award), and The Inner Circle. His most recent story collections are Tooth and Claw and The Human Fly and Other Stories.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Marie Arana Move over, Nora Roberts! With this potboiler about the love life of Frank Lloyd Wright, T.C. Boyle, one of America's most inventive writers, bursts feverishly into the realm of romance fiction. The Women is an altogether manic, occasionally baffling and yet strangely riveting novel. True readers of the genre, be warned: It's a romance only in spirit. Call it a thinking man's soap opera. As for the women, well . . . . The fiery loves that populated the life of America's premier architect make excellent grist for an over-the-top melodrama. Wright's private life was shocking, lurid, the stuff of pulp fiction. For three decades and more, American tabloids thrived on appalling revelations about it. World readers gasped over the wicked details. He had always been a flirt and womanizer. His first wife, Kitty Tobin, by whom he fathered six children, was tolerant enough of his passing infidelities. But as his fame burgeoned, Wright became more flamboyant, increasingly reckless. He rode through town in his flashy convertible, openly canoodling with his neighbor's wife. She was the lovely, strong-willed Mamah Cheney, and, before long, she was front-page news. The scandal was so outrageous that the two lovers were forced to flee to Europe, leaving their spouses and families behind. On his return, a bit more than a year later, Wright began the construction of his empire's nerve center, Taliesin, and Mamah came to live with him there, in flagrante, to the distress of their neighbors. The affair came to a tragic end when Wright's manservant went on a rampage and murdered seven of Taliesin's inhabitants, bludgeoning them with an axe. Among the victims were Mamah and her two children. All this has been retold recently in Nancy Horan's popular novel Loving Frank, but the account is only one of six parts in Boyle's salacious and exhaustive chronicle. The truth is that Wright went on to commit an abundance of peccadilloes. He took up with Maude Miriam Noel, a Memphis adventuress with a morphine habit, parading her about, to the horror of his ever-vigilant mother. Less than a year after he married Miriam, he began an affair with Olgivanna Milanoff, a former devotee of the eccentric and priapic Russian mystic Gurdjieff. When Wright brought Olgivanna to the highly disciplined -- some would say tyrannical -- Taliesin, faking her identity as a servant, his wife was already far away, bored with the country life. Nevertheless, Miriam mounted a very public and nasty long-distance campaign to smear her. But by then Olgivanna was pregnant with Wright's child. She eventually won out over Miriam and came to rule Taliesin every bit as despotically as her husband, earning the soubriquet "Dragon Lady." Boyle tells all this in garish detail, luxuriating in the considerable opportunity for heated sex and operatic gush such a chronicle of human foibles might offer. ("And he, fully aroused, his face gone rubicund and his ears glistening like Christmas ornaments in the quavering light, breathed his answer against the soft heat of her lips.") But as the novel unfolds, the quirky architecture of Boyle's book proves to be its undoing. Events proceed in reverse, so that a reader stumbles from last wife to first. Narrating the story is a fictional apprentice (Wright had many), a genial Japanese man named Tadashi Sato, whose introduction is palatable enough, but whose footnotes and asides become increasingly annoying and disruptive. Wright is Wrieto-San. And then there's a co-narrator named O'Flaherty-San. Why these buffers are necessary or why Boyle decided to employ them, we never know. What we do know is this: Every time the story begins to get some traction -- just as we're pulled toward the next juicy morsel -- we are reminded to look through a thoroughly trumped up lens. Eventually, Boyle's structure reveals itself as a steady, efficient machine against the natural drama. How can there be any tension when you know how a story will end? Where is the plot when you find yourself moving backward? As they parade by in their tidy Japanese boxes, Wright's women turn out to be strikingly similar: They are conniving harridans with big scores to settle. And though it's impossible not to read on (so striking and wild is the true story), Wright, too, becomes something of a mask: a cruel, self-absorbed, oversexed genius. Even his famous edifices never quite come alive. So much for the material. But, oh, the writing! It's the writing that pulls you through, and it's the writing that will reward you in the last scene of this altogether predictable and (sometimes deliciously) overwrought novel. Boyle is a marvel at descriptive prose. He has proved it again and again in a stream of books that includes Drop City and World's End. Through the congeries that makes up this maddening maze of a novel, you find yourself turning the page and hitting on something like this: "Outside, beyond the gray frame of the window, the weather was dreary, funereal clouds strung from the rooftops like laundry hung out to dry, and so cold even the dirty gray ratlike pigeons were huddled against it, dark motionless lines of frozen feathers and arrested beaks blighting the eaves as far as she could see down both sides of the block." So you go on, from scene to scene, marveling at a turn of phrase or some well-articulated emotion. As with a fickle lover, it's the words that keep you there.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Viking Press; First Edition (February 10, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670020419
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670020416
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.55 x 9.36 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,392,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,511 in Biographical Fiction (Books)
- #60,882 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #69,052 in American Literature (Books)

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T. C. Boyle is the author of eleven novels, including World's End (winner of the PEN/FaulknerAward), Drop City (a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award), and The Inner Circle. His most recent story collections are Tooth and Claw and The Human Fly and Other Stories.

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sb-lynn

Great book - don't miss the footnotes

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2009

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Let me start off by saying that I am a big fan of T. C. Boyle, and this book did not disappoint.

Brief, brief summary, no spoilers:

The title "The Women" refers to the 3 main lovers/wives of famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The story of each woman is prefaced by an "introduction" by one of Lloyd's apprentices, a Japanese man named Tadashi Sato. (Wright's first wife is discussed, but she doesn't get a separate introduction.)

In his narration, Tadashi tells of his arrival at Taliesin, Wright's magnificent home in Wisconsin. Whereas his tale goes in chronological order, the story of the women does not.

And that's one of the things that made this novel so memorable for me - we see characters at different points in time, through their own eyes, and through those of others. This also helped make the foreshadowing and sense of menace so palpable. When I finished that last page, I felt like I had been through an experience - and I had that wonderful reader "high" that comes with finishing a wonderful, thought-provoking book.

I do have a couple of quibbles - I am not sure how I felt about the narration by Tadashi. I think the book might have been better without it. It felt a little disruptive - as if it were from a different story, both in mood and in content.

Also, I thought one of the characters, Miriam, was almost cartoonish in her portrayal as a villain. She definitely helped give the book some of its best moments, but she never felt real to me because she consistently acted the same way, and always against her best interest. Mind you, I know there are people that do that, but she never sprung to life for me, and I could never see anyone being friends with her, lest marrying her.

All in all though, this was just a terrific read. I recommend reading it with Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan. I think that The Women is the better book, but the experience of reading one right on the heels of the other is very rewarding and fulfilling.

Recommended, especially for book clubs.

*** Note, I read this on a Kindle, and missed the footnotes when Tadashi was narrating. Be sure to read them because they add to the enjoyment of the book. (And as to how to easily access the Kindle footnotes, just check out the first comment to this post.)

6 people found this helpful

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Laurence R. Bachmann

Feminists, House-Fraus, Freaks and Frank.

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2015

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Apparently, Frank Lloyd Wright was a sort of male Siren, irresistibly alluring to women of all types. And like the Sirens of Greek myth when you responded to his beck and call, you were dashed to pieces upon his monumental ego, cruelty or indifference. So says T. C. Boyle, who has written an engaging, if over-long fictionalized version of the women in America's, and perhaps history's, greatest architect.

Having some familiarity and appreciation of his work, I was clueless as to his life, which from the Great War until his death in the 1950s was a tabloid editor's dream come true. Rupert Murdoch would have paid the man royalties for the number of papers his tawdry, tragic and tacky relationships sold. Following is an outline of some of the circumstances: If you don't want to know, DON'T read on. Twenty years into his first marriage, 6 children later FLW notices he's a genius and his wife's a bore. Naturally, that entitles him to break up and pursue the very modern and truly fascinating Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

Her truly gruesome end opens the door for my personal favorite--mad as a hatter Miriam Noel--morphine addict and sometimes sculptress who make Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction seem tame by comparison. Fortunate to get out of the relationship with all of his reproductive parts intact, Wright ends his life with the disappointingly hypocritical Olgiavanna, a pale shadow of the women who came and conquered before her. And a nasty busy-body to boot.

The author has done a ton of research and The Women shines because of it. The reincarnations of Wright's masterpiece, Taliesin, is well and beautifully told. I have two criticisms of the book, which others may not feel warranted. First, the section about Miriam (who happened to be my favorite character) is too long. It could be cut by a third. Second, while Wright is occasionally portrayed as selfish or egotistical, he is cut a great deal of slack and mostly comes off as your dutch uncle.

Personally I think he was a much nastier and much more overtly selfish SOB who exacted a price to be in his presence. The author and I can disagree about this but if you're going to portray the women in his life--i.e., Frank from their POV, Boyle could have or should have been harder on the person (not the genius--there's no doubt about that). As I said though, others won't agree. Or think parts too long. The Women succeeds many levels but two that are seemingly contradictory: informative and titillating. Enjoy!

24 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

cathy

Great book

Reviewed in Canada on February 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

There is absolutely nothing to like about FLW and his ladies. His architecture has proven to be an artistic myth. Take a trip to southern Florida university. The buildings have been deemed to be on the endangered artifacts list. They can’t keep up with the maintenance of these ill-constructed buildings

TJ

Astonishing

Reviewed in Australia on February 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

The first time I read the book, it escaped my notice that the work was non fiction and I read it as fiction. The characters were powerfully drawn, their strengths and foibles evident, the way society sees and treats them painful to behold, the writing immediate and urgent.
When I found it was non fiction I had to go back, could these women be even more real? Every word held a different flavour and packed a bigger punch, esp the role of desire and it’s consequences in the lives and worlds of each of them.
An exceptional and enlightening read.

Beisswenger

The Women

Reviewed in France on April 6, 2013

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I was quite disapointed. This is not a biography what I had expected but a novel with too much imagination.

Bee

The Women

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 14, 2012

Verified Purchase

A very well written book, which is a fascinating read. The only problem is, that as I progressed through the book, I hated Frank Lloyd Wright more and more. What an odious, self-absorbed, pompous and arrogant man he was. His choice of women wasn't much better. However, well worth reading for all of that.
I can't help thinking that he took all of the credit for a lot of 'his' well known designs, but which his apprentices came up with!

smidirin

T.C. Boyle's "The Women"

Reviewed in Germany on May 31, 2009

Verified Purchase

T.C. Boyle's most recent work is a fictional telling of just some of the life and times of the very real Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest and most enigmatic architects of the 20th century and one uniquely inspired by the American landscape and experience.
The "women" are HIS women, his wives and mistress. The lines between fact and fiction are blurred and much of the joy in reading Boyle's narrative heightened by the desire to disseminate the actual from the imaginary. A little research certainly satisfies the veracity of time and place and some of the more macabre events, and the author's elegant prose makes for a sparkling tableau.
The cast of characters is grotesque! Wright - the integrity of his work at odds with an egomania that lets little room for moral reflection. What then is genius if not such contradiction? And the damaged women he was drawn to, that he loved and discarded, or they of him, what is it then to be the appendage of this genius?
A sweeping, blistering tale of an America of long ago, that lives still in its creative genius, and its passion to celebrate and destroy that genius. Monstrous and humane. Frank Lloyd Wright IS America. I loved this story and recommend it gladly. (PS: Where are the Coen brothers!)

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