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Loving Frank: A Novel |  | Author: Nancy Horan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Seller: noah74
Rating:  317 reviews
Sales Rank: 476
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0345495004
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345495006
ASIN: 0345495004
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, August 2007: It's a rare treasure to find a historically imagined novel that is at once fully versed in the facts and unafraid of weaving those truths into a story that dares to explore the unanswered questions. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. Mamah's bright, earnest spirit is particularly tender in the context of her time and place, which afforded her little opportunity to realize the intellectual life for which she yearned. Loving Frank is a remarkable literary achievement, tenderly acute and even-handed in even the most heartbreaking moments, and an auspicious debut from a writer to watch. --Anne Bartholomew
Product Description
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 Americaâs greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheneyâs 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. Horanâs Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamahâs is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novelâs 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.
Advance praise for Loving Frank:
âLoving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. Itâs mesmerizing and fascinatingâfilled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years agoâall gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.â
âLauren Belfer, author of City of Light
âThis graceful, assured first novel tells the remarkable story of the long-lived affair between Frank Lloyd Wright, a passionate and impossible figure, and Mamah Cheney, a married woman whom Wright beguiled and led beyond the restraint of convention. It is engrossing, provocative reading.â
ââScott Turow
âIt takes great courage to write a novel about historical people, and in particular to give voice to someone as mythic as Frank Lloyd Wright. This beautifully written novel about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wrightâs love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.â
ââJane Hamilton
âI admire this novel, adore this novel, for so many reasons: The intelligence and lyricism of the prose. The attention to period detail. The epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head and heart and soul since reading this book; I doubt sheâll ever leave.â
âElizabeth Berg
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 317
 Wonderful November 21, 2009
Ravel (Montréal, Québec Canada)
What a wonderful subject matter for a novel! It is clear that doing a biography with the material available would have been insufficent but Ms Horan found a way to make this tale fascinating.
Mamah is a finely chiseled portrait of a strong woman confronted with an equally strong Wright. The brutal ending of her life is well rendered, without the 'horror movie' effect I expected.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in F.L. Wright as an illuminating substitute (though partly fictionnal) to a short sequence of the renowned architect's life.
A REAL SHOCKER November 10, 2009
G. Fairless (California)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I abosolutely loved thier love story and all they went through during the time period this took place. The affair between 2 married people in the early 1920's was so scandalous it was the big story in the city/town newspaper. It was such a touching story until the very "explosive" ending which left me running to the internet so that I could google to find out if this was fact or fiction. What a shocker!!
 Loving Frank: Wondering What is Left For Me to Love November 9, 2009
Kate Westrich (Cincinnati, Ohio United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nancy Horan's first novel "Loving Frank" details the period of his life when he leaves his wife for one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Per Horan's intention, the star of the book is really Mamah. During the time period of this book, the early 1900s, she is ahead of her time in terms of her views on motherhood, women's right and woman working. But as much as she must have challenged the people who lived alongside her, she challenged me, the reader.
I agree with Mamah (and Frank Lloyd Wright) that no woman can be defined solely by motherhood or by being a wife. I am grateful that my choice not to start popping out babies has not turned me into some outcast. (Not enough progress has been made on this front, though. I am challenged to defend this perspective regularly and frequently met with "Oh, you'll change your mind.")
I agree with the notion that you do your children no favors by staying in an unhappy marriage / job / life. All that results from doing so is teaching them that being unhappy is okay and they they too should strive for such discontent in their own lives. We do much better by trying to attain happiness and fulfillment.
Where I struggled with this book is that I found both Mamah and Frank Lloyd Wright, particularly Wright, so unlikeable.
While it is okay to teach your children not to settle for average but instead to strive for success, there are some responsibilities you have to them as your parents. In "Loving Frank", Horan details all of the irresponsibilities of Frank Lloyd Wright. He leaves his wife and six children to travel to Europe and have an affair. He doesn't pay his employees, particularly the young architects who need the money more than anyone. He alternates by giving women chance in architecture and shooting them down as mere draftsman. What is there for the reader to like about him? Is his only redeeming quality the collection of buildings he left behind? Because that leaves me liking his talent but still not the man.
I felt similarly about Mamah. I am happy she had the courage to go out and succeed in life, independently of her husband. I am happy she did not settle to be a stay-at-home mom if that dud not give her pleasure. But isn't part of being a responsible adult owning up to the choices you make and acting responsibly about them? Horan writes of Mamah leaving her kids to go to Europe and being grateful to her sister for watching the children. But not once do we read of Mamah portrayed asking her sister to watch the children. I know that sometimes things happen without a lot of forethought, even things like children. But it's hard for me to accept the idea that it is okay to make children and to just leave them. Or more difficult for me to digest, to leave the children but assume that you have an open ticket to go back and reclaim them at any time.
I'm pleased that I completed reading "Loving Frank" and I do feel like I have better insight into Frank Lloyd Wright after having read it. I just wished I felt more love for him at the end of the story.
Loving Frank November 2, 2009
B. J. Krieser (Wisconsin)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am very satisfied with this novel. I am 3/4 the way through and I am enjoying a look into the life of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah - his love....
Quite a story.
Condition of the book was satisfactory also...just a little used.
Thanks for speedy service.
BJK
Disjointed October 27, 2009
DUSA (Panama City Beach, FL USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author's journalist background is evident in the fine way she presents history and facts. The weakness of this novel lies in the sophomoric, romance novel treatment of the characters and their relationship. It was like trying to know someone by looking at them from a distance.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 317
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