Goodreads | Loving Frank: A Novel (Hardcover) by Nancy Horan

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Walt rated it:

06/23/08

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Walt by: reading group
recommends it for: anyone.

I like to read first published novels by authors, so when my reading group, comprised primarily of women, chose Loving Frank, I was looking forward to it. It didn't disappoint me. I enjoyed the narrative flow, which was smooth and calm as a river, even when it had exciting rapids. The story arced like a rainbow and climaxed like 24. It didn't seem written by a novice. I would say, "Great job, Nancy Horan."
Early in marriage, my wife and I moved from the West to the Midwest. We had l...more I like to read first published novels by authors, so when my reading group, comprised primarily of women, chose Loving Frank, I was looking forward to it. It didn't disappoint me. I enjoyed the narrative flow, which was smooth and calm as a river, even when it had exciting rapids. The story arced like a rainbow and climaxed like 24. It didn't seem written by a novice. I would say, "Great job, Nancy Horan."
Early in marriage, my wife and I moved from the West to the Midwest. We had lived a sheltered life. We had both graduated with Bachelor of Arts degrees and were beginning careers. Our employer trained us in downtown Chicago. We had an infant daughter and needed someone to care for her daytimes while we went to the Loop. Fortunately, my wife's uncle and aunt lived in a suburb, so we lodged in a motel nearby and Aunt Mary graciously took care of our daughter.
I recall becoming acquainted with Frank Lloyd Wright and Oak Park, a Chicago neighborhood, about that time. I believe we drove through Oak Park, where he built his first home. Perhaps we even saw the house. This was in the 1970s, well after the time of Mamah's story. The complexion of society had changed. Anyway, the experience with Wright made my reading of this book more compelling. I had not realized Wright's character flaws before. I only knew of his architectural genius. Of course, I knew nothing of Mamah Borthwick. She was a complete unknown. I also knew nothing of Wright's family life.
Mamah Borthwick, the protagonist, is the classical tragic character. It is odd how one as gifted as Wright was artistically and architecturally could screw up life with his family and his lover so much. If Mamah is the protagonist, and she is, Wright is far and away the antagonist, although not the only one. Selfishness hangs right in there, too.
Mamah is a dupe, and Wright is a manipulator and a narcissist. The reason I believe Mamah comes across as a fool is because of some of the stupid thing she says and does. In her married life, a nanny cares for her kids. When Mamah has them alone on a train and one becomes ill, she's clueless what to do, wondering what her nanny would do with the child. And this is feminism? Ignorant? Incompetent?
She abandons her children when they need her most so she can become a mistress to Frank Floyd Wright. "I am putty in your hands, so quickly," she says. In other words, she's infatuated, drunken with passion, but not deeply in love. Not committed. She tells her kids, "I'm going on a small vacation [that lasts two years:]…just for me." Uh huh. And who was that other guy with you on vacation? Her decision is, in her estimation, not "cruel self-indulgence" but "love for life." The children will be better off with happy parents, i.e. with a selfish mother.
Besides everything else, Mamah's husband, Edwin, is simply a terrific guy. Given the choice--and perhaps a sex-change operation-- I wouldn't have minded marrying him myself. And then, given the life of leisure his profession afforded, I'd indulge my feminist whims. Mamah's feminism certainly didn't seem enhanced or facilitated by Frank.
She supposedly loved Frank with every "cell in her body." Hmmm. I wonder. She threatens to leave him if he doesn't change. Yet doesn't he mold her just the way he wants her? Frank tells her she makes him "want to be a better man," but all the while he remains deceitful and arrogant, manipulating and lording it over people that work for him, people for whom he works, and his family.
When my wife and I left the West and our family roots for Illinois, we said goodbye to a sheltered existence for one out there, more enlightened and more free. We made the trip together, with our daughter. While it was frowned upon where we came from for a mother to work and to leave a child with a babysitter in order to pursue work, my wife did so, not altogether happy about it. And I think all of us, including my daughter profited by it. Loving Frank is a book that posits infatuation and self-love over against enduring, sacrificial love. No matter the era, in my estimation, the stamina to stay wins out over caprice and whimsy. Enduring love trumps infatuation and lust.
Fling or family? "Putty in your hands" doesn't seem very feminist to me.
I enjoyed reading and thinking about this a lot.
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Schmacko rated it:

06/23/08

Read in June, 2008

I read Nancy Horan's debut book, because in a few days I will be up in Wisconsin very near some of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous works. Loving Frank is a somewhat-fictional account of the little-known feminist Mameh Borthwick Cheney and her 9-year affair with FLW. This relationship broke up two marriages and filled papers with scandal, as the couple ran away to Europe and then came to build their famous home, Taliesin, in Wisconsin.

Some books, I can concede are perfectly well-...more I read Nancy Horan's debut book, because in a few days I will be up in Wisconsin very near some of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous works. Loving Frank is a somewhat-fictional account of the little-known feminist Mameh Borthwick Cheney and her 9-year affair with FLW. This relationship broke up two marriages and filled papers with scandal, as the couple ran away to Europe and then came to build their famous home, Taliesin, in Wisconsin.

Some books, I can concede are perfectly well-written books, and yet I still am not their target audience. I felt I had a good book I was not built to enjoy.

Loving Frank does deftly weave facts about FLW's and Mameh Borthwick's culture and history in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Horan formulates a clear feeling for their post-Victorian lives in Oak Park, Illinois. There is also a strong sense that many of the letters, newspaper articles, and correspondence are based in truth, if not verbatim.

Horan is also fairly deft at describing the ideas or concepts of Wright's design. Though, admittedly, Horan is better at the metaphor than she is at the practical description of his buildings. (I found myself looking up pictures online to understand what Horan meant by her poetic turns of structural phrase.) Also, Wright's full history and affect on American architecture are only scattered piecemeal throughout the book, requiring the reader to formulate a biographical timeline that doesn't exist in the book.

Perhaps the best part of the book is that Loving Frank helps the reader ponder important questions of about feminism, marriage, and self-destiny.

So, why was I frustrated reading this book?

Much of the book is framed as an angst-riddled romantic novel. Wright and Borthwick spend so many pages wallowing in their lovelorn conundrums that the emotions start to feel like a second-rate Wuthering Heights. Also, Horan has a journalism background, and yet she is not concise or to-the-point. Loving Frank is fairly indirect and long-winded. It is as if the larger picture of this famous relationship got lost in reporting on the minutiae – every telegraph and newspaper article. Many chapters blather on as some variation of the chapters before; nothing new is raised, or if it is, it ends up being inconsequential to the whole story.

Many people would love this book. They would find such tangential and thorough emotional writing a joy to explore. They would sink themselves into such a book, reveling in the details, feeling as if they really got to know everything about these two interesting historical figures. I found myself digging for new information, new insight, data outside of the drippy emotions. These things I longed for are buried somewhere deep in there, in between the long bouts of romance and long paragraphs of navel-gazing reflection and guilt-riddled self-flagellation, on a few of the pages of this 54-chapter, 356-page book. I could have just done without the bodice-ripping sections.
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Shannon rated it:

06/25/08

Read in June, 2008

recommended to Shannon by: Jane Tesch

I was very disappointed by this book. In the past two years, Jason and I have toured two Frank Lloyd Wright homes and I took a modern architecture class in college that featured a ton of his work, so I thought I would enjoy a fictionalized glimpse of his personal life. I did enjoy reading about Taliesin and the Midway Gardens and how FLW incorporated thoughts from disparate cultures (Japanese, Italian, German) into his own creations.

What I didn't like was Mamah, who was unfortunately the m...more

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Susan Wittig Albert rated it:

03/14/08

bookshelves: lifebased-fiction

Read in September, 2007

In 1972, I attended a conference at Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house, Taliesin, 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 wi...more In 1972, I attended a conference at Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house, Taliesin, 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 since this is a life-based fiction, 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. ...less

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John rated it:

12/24/07

Read in December, 2007

Two people, selfish and completely self absorbed who flaunt convention and common sense while living their own self styled code of ethics “I want for me” A code invoked throughout their lifetimes with little consideration for the destruction, exploitation and pain caused for the adults and children left in their wake. 8 children and a niece who had already lost her own mother experienced directly the effects of this cavalier attitude toward responsibility. Fanciful thinking aside, I saw no...more

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Susan rated it:

09/26/07

bookshelves: yomr

Read in September, 2007

Quite a rollercoaster - about midway through this book, I was completely inspired to DO THINGS. To be intellectual and well spoken and creative; in short, to not be just a mom, as I am most days. I thought Mamah was incredible; her self-discovery so moving.

But as the book progressed, I started to like her less and less. And Frank Lloyd Wright I never found an endearing character. Pompous ass, yes. I didn't think either of them were justified in their actions and I certainly couldn't get...more

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Sara rated it:

12/26/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: Frank Lloyd Wright worshippers, anyone who enjoys a good narrative

Nancy Horan's fictionalized version of the true story of the affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney fills in the raw facts with well-researched context and beautifully expressed emotion.

Horan's exploration of Mamah's painful experiences as a renegade woman going against the Victorian ideals is touching and realistic. She does an excellent job of turning these real people into relatable characters and fleshes them out using letters, anecdotes with sensationalist news...more

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Penelope rated it:

08/30/08

Read in August, 2008

recommends it for: EVERYONE! Book Clubs

WOW. I just finished this book and that's the first word that comes to mind. HOLY CRAP are the second and third. Talk about an emotional punch to the gut.

Before reading this novel, I knew of Frank Lloyd Wright and his amazing designs but nothing of his personal life. It surprised me right off the bat to learn that he left his first wife for another woman, arguably the love of his life, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. The novel chronicles their affair from beginning to end. Love, soul mates, sex ...more WOW. I just finished this book and that's the first word that comes to mind. HOLY CRAP are the second and third. Talk about an emotional punch to the gut.

Before reading this novel, I knew of Frank Lloyd Wright and his amazing designs but nothing of his personal life. It surprised me right off the bat to learn that he left his first wife for another woman, arguably the love of his life, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. The novel chronicles their affair from beginning to end. Love, soul mates, sex and romance is always fun to read, and I found Mamah and Frank's time together to be particularly enthralling. However, it's their special circumstances and the author's writing style that make this book a must read.

A woman of the early 1900s, Mamah chose her personal happiness and freedom instead of the socially accepted method of motherhood. Her choices and subsequent intellectual justifications comprise a large portion of the novel. It also provides for thoughtful discussion.

As a mother myself, I struggle with her choices concerning her children. For NO ONE or NO THING would I forsake my children; I was born to be their mother, and I take that honor not only seriously but joyfully. Thus, it was extremely hard not to judge Mamah by my own standards of motherhood. However, I truly believe it's even harder to accept, and perhaps, celebrate Mamah for who she was, and that's what I did in the end.

And, as I reminded myself time and time again, things have changed from 100 years ago. If I was in an unsatisfying marriage and then found true love with another man, (for the record, my husband and soul mate are one and the same. most days :0), in all likelihood, I would be able to conduct myself in such a manner that I could have it all – a divorce, a remarriage AND my kids. I’m not an expert by any means, but I don’t believe those options were readily available to women in the early 1900s. Then again, I don’t think Mamah ever truly wanted the children to be with her full time. All of her actions and choices ensured against that slight possibility.

Just as there is a difference in donating sperm to be a biological father and actually being a Dad, not every woman that bears a child is a Mother. Society, back in 1903 and still in 2008, judges women much more harshly on this point than we do men. When men leave the rearing of their children to the mothers, we shake our heads and shrug; with women, we gasp, shriek and condemn -- case closed.

Mamah was never emotionally invested in her children; she thought of them as burdens preventing her own happiness. Given that reality, I easily argue it was in the children's best interests that she was removed herself from their daily lives. The kids went through hell, no doubt, and so much of it could have been avoided if Mamah possessed even the tiniest amount of mothering sense whatsoever. However, if she had stayed with her family, to what sort of emotional devastation would the children be subjected? I can't imagine any child being better served by a physically present but emotionally absent mother than by a doting, loving father, aunt and eventual step-mother. Had Mamah ever reached this same conclusion (at the birth of her second child, after meeting Frank, ….or at any point at all), I could have respected her as a mother and as a woman with more ease.

The author's writing style is beautiful and intelligent. It flows easily, and I flew through the pages. Even being a fully invested mother of two young and very active boys, I finished this book in less than 48 hours. (yes, I'm a fast reader and yes, I was a bit tired that one morning ;)

Without spoiling anything, I cannot say any more than you MUST read this book.
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Gail rated it:

07/10/08

Read in July, 2008

So I realize I have a problem of, you, know, praising a LOT of books I read. And I'm sorry, I try to be honest, I do (and I AM. I just think I pick a lot of winners - ha ;)

But seriously, this book. WOW. WOW. WOW. I love it in a way I haven't loved a book in a while (even all the ones I've said I loved).

First off, for those unfamiliar with the plot, this is historical fiction at its finest — detailing the love affair between FLW and Mamah Cheney. It's a real affair, and the timeline (i...more

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Katherine rated it:

11/30/07

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Fans of Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture and the Women's Movement

Awesome book--especially as a debut novel! The last 50 pages took me by surprise and kept me glued until the very end! I didn't know anything about Mamah Borthwick and knew very little about Frank Lloyd Wright, so it was surprising to read what happens in the end. If anything, Horan's narrative technique in the last 50 pages made the book for me.

Don't be fooled by the title, though. This book is so much more than a story about an illicit love affair and the scandal it caused--and so much mor...more

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Courtney rated it:

09/06/07

bookshelves: favoritereads

Read in September, 2007

Just finished it and L-O-V-E-D it. Highly recommend.
This is the kind of book that inspires me to write the author to just share how much I loved the book.
It is a book of fiction, based on the actual lives of Frank Lloyd Wright and his "girlfriend/mistress". But so much more. It is written with such a pitch perfect tone for the time (very early 1900's)---romantic everyday language, world travel, etc.etc.
Some of you already know the story of Frank and Mamah and some of you might be...more

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Andrea rated it:

09/26/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in August, 2007

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Stephanie rated it:

01/21/08

bookshelves: badgirls, greatfnwriting

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Stephanie by: book club selection
recommends it for: anybody who is ready to pack it in for La Vie Boheme

Never have I been so pleasantly surprised by a book as I have by Loving Frank. Although I was familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's work when I read this, I had no idea how fascinating his personal life was. Apparently, the guy had a knack for luring women away from their home and families. This book is about the most fascinating of his many mistresses, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. What made an erudite mother of two leave her family and exalted social status to live in the wilds of Wisconsin with...more

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Molly rated it:

10/13/08

bookshelves: to-read, worththeread

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Molly by: Mom
recommends it for: book club

Holy smokes does this book have a shocking ending. There is not one note on the book flap or in cover blurbs to point to that. It's a historical novel, a love affair between a woman named Mamah Borthwright or -wick (or something like that) and Frank Lloyd Wright. They really did leave their families--his six children, her three--to be with one another in 1909.

As an editor, I'm surprised by the book editor's decision to not make note of the tragic twist at the end even once on the cover. The ...more

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Carol rated it:

(review of isbn 1423332881)

05/07/08

Read in May, 2008

This is another first novel that I could not put down. The affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, both of whom were married, was a scandal in the early 1900's. This author had the courage to write an outstanding historical novel about these controversial characters. Author, Nancy Horan, extensively researched to help bring Mamah Cheney to life. We intimately view all the sides to the protagonists and I grew to love them in all their humanity, dispite their flaws. The ending was ...more

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Nina rated it:

08/13/08

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Nina by: Chris, mom
recommends it for: people who like Frank Lloyd Wright

I have always been facinated with Frank Lloyd Wright. I have been to some of his houses, and love the modern simple design. This story was told from the point of view of his mistress Mahmah. I didn't even know this part of his life was true. The ending SHOCKED me, and I was amazed that I didn't know the truth behind it. A complex struggle between leaving your family for the one you love. An interesting look what happened to women who wanted divorce during 1909. I am not a big fan of historical f...more

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Lucy rated it:

11/10/08

Read in October, 2008

This book was brought to my attention several months ago but I didn't seriously consider reading it because I thought it was essentially a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect. I have a serious handicap when it comes to reading non-fiction and if I'm going to read a biography of someone, I wanted to read about someone whose life's details I had some...nay....any interest in knowing. An architect, even a really, really famous one, didn't meet that criteria.

When it was selecte...more This book was brought to my attention several months ago but I didn't seriously consider reading it because I thought it was essentially a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect. I have a serious handicap when it comes to reading non-fiction and if I'm going to read a biography of someone, I wanted to read about someone whose life's details I had some...nay....any interest in knowing. An architect, even a really, really famous one, didn't meet that criteria.

When it was selected as a book group selection, I waved my white flag and read it anyway. Say what you will about book groups, one thing I appreciate about the forum is that they tend to throw books in my path that I wouldn't otherwise read. When I end up actually enjoying the mandated book, I appreciate the selection even more.

Loving Frank is part factual biography, part fictional novel featuring the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney's as she fell in love with Frank Lloyd Wright. Mamah, a feminist, intellectual and suffragist, was married to safe, loyal but rather boring Edwin Cheney. The married couple were financially secure enough to keep a nanny, a housekeeper and eventually hire an up and coming architect to build one of his conceptually new "Prairie Houses". Financial and marital security did not bring contentment to Mamah, however, and when Wright intimately connects with her on an intellectual and emotional level during the building of her and her husband's home, a physical affair between the two quickly follows.

What makes this story compelling and great discussion fodder isn't Frank and Mamah's relationship or their affair, it's the constant negotiating and justification the author forces Mamah to debate with herself and with the world about the honesty and integrity of romantic and self love. For Mamah, a person's own happiness super ceded that of any one else's, including one's children, although she admitted several times how incongruous that belief felt at times. When she found literature written by radical thinker, Ellen Key, her belief that she should be with Frank at the expense of everything else, because she loved him, deepened. I am left wondering when, if ever, a selfish act is the BEST act. As much as the pair wished it to be so, they did not exist in a bubble and their relationship had real and lasting consequences to the families they abandoned.

If the moral debate is the actual gift of the book (and for me, it was), then the fancy wrapping and giant bow is the holy-cow-wow! drama and historically significant events that made up the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. This should be a very interesting discussion....less

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Stacey rated it:

10/12/08

Read in October, 2008

I wanted more out of this book but also less. It felt very long without being very satisfying. The history and characters of Frank Lloyd Wright's early to mid years are intriguing, but the whole love affair was downright bizarre and frankly a bit harlequin (although disappointingly less steamy). I could not really tell what she saw in him. I thought he was a first-class a-hole. A genius one to be sure, but I just wanted to punch him in the face. He's like one of those boys in college who t...more

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Julie H. rated it:

09/28/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in September, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Loving Frank: A Novel

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