Loving Frank: A Novel

This book is beautifully written and totally enthralling. I could not put it down. It teeters on Brilliant! Historical fiction is so hard to bring off convincingly. Never for a moment did I doubt it. Buy it, read it. You will not be sorry.

The book is a well written historical novel. Although it is fictional, the story appears to be thoroughly researched and documented. Based on this documentation, including letters, newspaper articles, etc., the author presents an intimate picture of Wright's relationship with his Soul Mate, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Wright is so passionate and focused on his work and career success, that it is surprising to see how much he cares for Mamah.
This account of the lives of two intelligent and very conscious people is told from Mamah's heart and not from Wright's perspective. Their "affair" is tabloid fodder and out of sync with the social and moral double standards of the era in which they lived. Inspite of this continual pressure, Frank and Mamah try to live their lives based on their own strong beliefs and desires.
The novel is a unique historical snapshot of the most moving events in the lives of two people who are bound together in a complex, multi-layered relationship. Although Wright went on to have other affairs and marriages, his final request was to be buried next to Mamah.

I felt the author wanted me to sympathize with Mamah, but I just couldn't. She was completely spoiled and selfish. She wanted to live her life the way she wanted with no consequences for her actions and choices. She CHOSE to marry Edwin, and not as a young, just-out-of-high school girl, but as a woman of 30. By that time she should have had more of an idea of what she wanted from life. Rather than deal with her choice, she abandoned him and her two children. He had done nothing to her - he wasn't abusive, he didn't mistreat the children. He just wasn't exciting enough for her, nor did he flatter her into thinking she was just so extremely intelligent the way Frank did. Then when she again CHOSE to leave her husband, she complained about the consequence of losing her chidren as a result. Even then, she took no steps to correct the action. Instead, she just whined about missing them. If she missed them that much, she could have gone home.

Frank was just as much, if not more, of a selfish narcissist as she was. With these two as main characters, it was hard to get into the book. My favorite scene was when her sister told her off. Lizzie, the one who had chosen not to get married because she enjoyed her life the way it was, was practically forced by circumstance to step in when Mamah ran off. Because Mamah wanted the freedom to make her own choices, it in essence robbed everyone else of their choices.

Even at the end, I felt great sympathy for Edwin, but very little for Frank and Mamah. I even felt more sympathy for Gertrude than for the ho and her pimp. That's what Mamah and Frank were to me.

I really looked forward to reading this, love all things FLW. It was a real struggle to finish it, should have quit about 1/4 of the way through. Very little emotional character development and there's a lot to draw from.

The end was particularly disturbing and although final for obvious reasons, very anticlimatic.

I did not know the background of Frank Lloyd Wright's life so this book read like a pleasant romantic novel. I had been told that it had a startling ending. At one point, I put it down for the day and said to my friend, "I don't get it. I'm enjoying the book but I'm almost finished and life is going along so well for everyone. What could possibly be the 'startling ending'?" The next day, I turned the page and ohmygawd. What an ending. If you don't know the history of Wright, just read the book. Knowing that the ending isn't "fictionalized" makes it all the more startling.