Loving Frank: A Novel

by Nancy Horan | Biographies & Memoirs |
ISBN: 9780345495006 Global Overview for this book
Registered by loriped of Keizer, Oregon USA on 3/20/2009
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by loriped from Keizer, Oregon USA on Friday, March 20, 2009
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.

Sending to Trekwoman as a thank you for being so understanding and a generous person. Enjoy

Journal Entry 2 by trekwoman from -- Somewhere In The State --, California USA on Tuesday, March 24, 2009
(((((((((((( Loriped and MrLoriped )))))))))))) You're sweet, both of you, to send me this book, which I've been wanting to read since it came out.

Thank you both. :)

Journal Entry 3 by trekwoman from -- Somewhere In The State --, California USA on Friday, March 27, 2009
Reading this book was very, very strange.

I used to date, and in fact was once engaged to, an architect who was quite a bit like Frank Lloyd Wright, both in mannerisms and personality. He lived in Chicago and worked for various firms in and around the area. I used to work in different shops, including the ArchiCenter, which is the Chicago Architecture Foundation store. Our relationship was very much like that of Frank and Mamah's. It was a raging, desperate, tortuous sort of thing. While I loved the man, I hated the relationship. And I struggled a lot to find my place in it, because I was not treated as an equal.

A passage in the book mentions Mamah walking into her study at Taliesin one day, only to discover FLW had removed a tin of flowers she had set on her windowsill because the sort of flowers affronted his vision. He put it on the floor. She felt stung. I can't even tell you the number of comments and little actions like that I went through. I could so well relate it is laughable.

Like FLW, my former would completely immerse in his work, his passions, his disuse for anyone and anything that didn't stroke his ego or his personal convictions. Sometimes this would include me. Naturally, our relationship didn't work out because I, like Mamah, insisted on something for myself and refused to bow to what his idea of me ought to be. The author mentions Ibsen and "A Doll's House" in the Readers' Guide. Yes! That's it, exactly.

The weight of the novel felt familiar and suffocating. My former even went so far as to volunteer at Robie House in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. As I read the novel, I lived and breathed all of that all over again. I felt myself touching the woodwork in the house and the concrete beneath my feet, the streets of Chicago, the ghosts of FLW and his work all around me, where it has been for years and which I can't seem to shake, even now.

There are two ghosts for me when I visit the city of Chicago: the architecture and the architects. I think it's partly why I want to move from here so very much. I like any town that has a history but which does not offer an architectural tour of any type.

Naturally, I had no idea this book would show me all of these things. Maybe I wouldn't have wanted to read it. And even though it was painful to read for all its' familiarity, I couldn't set it down. But I hope I can leave it behind me.

Journal Entry 4 by trekwoman at Controlled Release, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases on Monday, April 13, 2009

Released 14 yrs ago (4/13/2009 UTC) at Controlled Release, A Bookcrossing member -- Controlled Releases

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This book is donated to the Charlotte Court House Library.

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