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Loving Frank: A Novel | 
| Author: Nancy Horan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $11.20
You Save: $2.80 (20%)
Rating:  208 reviews
Sales Rank: 112
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0345495004
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345495006
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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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 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.
Advance praise for Loving Frank:
“Loving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. It’s mesmerizing and fascinating–filled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years ago–all gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.”
–Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light
“This 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.”
——Scott Turow
“It 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 Wright’s love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.”
——Jane Hamilton
“I 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 she’ll ever leave.”
–Elizabeth Berg
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 203 more reviews...
 Fascinating look at the internal life of Wright and his lover September 11, 2007
156 out of 172 found this review helpful
I have studied the work and bio of Frank Lloyd Wright for many years, even traveling to his Western headquarters, Taliesen West, and touring homes he built in four cities. I was well aware of his strengths and faults, but little has been published about the women in his wife, other than his domineering, smothering mother and his strident, domineering third (and last) wife. (I'm counting Mamah Borthwick, his lover for about a half-dozen years, as a second wife, since they would have married if his first wife had granted him a divorce; he and Borthwick lived together for several years).
Wright's towering ego is well known and well documented. By choosing to look at Wright and his work through the eyes of Mamah, his lover, in this fictionalized historical tale, Horan brings new insight into the demons and angels that inspired his vision. Wright's well-documented narcissism and inability to control himself personally is examined as well, but not as the fatal flaws offered by most biographers, but as components of an immensely complex and genius personality.
Mamah's (first) husband was first to see Wright's vision but Mamah was the one to embrace it wholly as Wright set about building them a home in Oak Park, not far from his own house. Wright was a star on the rise at that time, accepting commissions almost faster than he could manage them, but the affair he and Mamah embarked upon, which caused her to abandon her children, led to considerable scandal and major setbacks to his business.
Mamah was a recognized scholar and intellect until she was subsumed into a loveless marriage by the conventions of the time. In Wright she found the outlet for her passions and the independence she longed for, and the support and acceptance to rebuild her professional life, which became linked with that of the feminist Swedish scholar Ellen Keyes. Mamah's story, and that of the feminists of her time, is largely lost to history, and for reminding us of those seminal and important figures alone Horan deserves a deep bow.
Horan's work also exumes many litle-known facts about Wright and his times: his love for rural Wisconsin, where he grew up; his fascination with Japan and business in buying and selling Japanese antiguities; and his admiration for the classic Tuscan homes of northern Italy. As this book documents the times in which Wright was shaping his own vision with the help and guidance of Mamah, we can better understand the architecture for which he became so famous.
For those familiar with Wrights biography, the tragic end to his and mamah's affair is well known. For others, it will come as a shock. Horan is simply masterful in describing the events as they must have occurred.
I enjoyed the book tremendously, but I have one major quibble: Horan offers little documentation for her narrative for the reader who might want to learn as much as she does. As one generally familiar with the story I find it authemtic, but an appendix elaborating on the sources Horan used would add to the book's credibility.
Astonishingly fresh and riveting novel August 7, 2007
130 out of 161 found this review helpful
No matter your allegiance to the narcissistic genius who was Frank Lloyd Wright, it is Mamah Cheney who will mesmerize you with her intelligence, sensitivity and straightforward innocence. To dare to write such a complicated true story and to succeed so masterfully is a feat few authors can achieve. Nancy Horan is a remarkably gifted writer who brings you close to the complex love affair between Mamah and Frank and grips you with her elqouent prose. I have not enjoyed a book as much in a very long time. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to dive into an extremely satisfying novel and not emerge from its spell until you turn the last page.
Best Debut novel I have read August 12, 2007
77 out of 83 found this review helpful
I gave this Debut effort by Nancy Horan a try because of A life long interest in Frank Lloyd Wright (for more on Mr. Wright's life I recommend Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright). This ambitious work is a fictional accounting of the life of Mamah Cheney. After being hired by Cheney's husband to design a family home, Wright had a scandalous affair With Mrs. Cheney that wrecked both their marriages. This might seem like the plot of a romance novel, but believe me this book is not a romance novel! Cheney is portrayed as an educated woman struggling with her independence against the conventions of a time period when woman were for bearing children and keeping the home fires burning--to be seen but not heard!
Frank and Mamah both leave their respective families to live together and travel the world, then eventually settle in Wisconsin. Wright's bigger than life personality is adequately displayed by the author, but the real story here is Maham who lost much in her quest for self realization and also in perusing her love for Wright. Her life is tragically cut short which makes for a difficult ending, still reading about this amazing woman, who was a head of her time makes for fascinating reading. Speaking of great 20th century historical fiction do check out "Misfits Country" for a searing look into the lives of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift.
 Overrated October 2, 2007
50 out of 55 found this review helpful
For several weeks this book was on the best seller list and I anticipated reading it. With little knowledge of Frank Lloyd Wright I also anticipated learning something about his life and career. To the extent that I gained basic knowledge about FLW and his relationship with Mamah Cheney, the book was successful.
In some regards I found the depiction of Mamah like many historical novels that impose 21st century feelings and values on 19th century women. Since this is a true story, that statement cannot be totally true. However, I think that the author makes Mamah much more modern in her thinkings and opinions than she probably was in life.
While I thought the book was well written, somewhere along the line I missed what drew Mamah Cheney to FLW and what compeled her to have such undying love and to give up so much for "the man she loved." Maybe it was just that she wanted to get out of her relationship with Edward more so than a love for Frank. Perhaps with maturity and looking back in hind sight its easy to second guess Mamah's action. But she gave much more than he did. Consistent with FLW not paying his bills and taking advantage of friends, in a sense he took advantage of Mamah. He was able to go back and forth between his children and Mamah while she essentially burned her bridges. I question to what extent he truly loved a woman to ask her to do what she did. I certainly did not come away from this novel liking FLW.
I found Mamah to be a classic of a woman having an affair with a married man and not realizing that she was being screwed both figuratively and literally. Without Frank she literally had no place to go -no friends, no family. She gave up her children and took advantage of her sister who devoted her life to taking care of Mamah's children to be with Frank. Was the fox really worth the chase? When Mamah goes back to her house near the end of the novel I got the distinct feeling that she really second guessed her decision and the choices she made.
While other readers found this book a page turner, I labored to finish it. Unaware of Mamah's final demise, I was surprised and saddened by the ending. Even in the end, Mamah got the short end of the stick while Frank was able to go on and have other relationships and other women. He stayed on at his Taliesin. I wonder if FLW ever really realized the extent of Mamah's devotion and what she gave up for him.
Ones need to fulfill intellectual and physical desires trumps matrimonial and maternal responsibilities December 17, 2007
49 out of 67 found this review helpful
seems to be the mantra of Mamah Borthwick, linguist, intellectual, translator, wife, mother of two, and mistress of Frank Lloyd Wright. The author created this work of fiction by piecing together historical facts from newspaper articles, the writings of Mr. Wright (on architecture), and of Ms. Borthwick (translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key's works) as well as the content of ten letters written by Borthwick to Key. Although there is little to complain about in the writing save a few clichés: Maymah's thoughts about Frank (p 25), "I am putty in your hands, so quickly," feelings about him (p 34), "She loved him with every cell in her body," and Frank's words to her (p 128), "You make me want to be a better man," Maymah's thoughts and actions are so self-centered and self-serving that this book reads like one long lesson on the consequences of a life selfishly-lived. In one of few moments of clarity, she wonders how she has become so accepting of her own improper behavior considering (p 32), "She had always thought herself a deeply moral person," yet agrees with a passage of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's (p 33), "It is not sufficient to be a mother; an oyster can be a mother." Her disdain for motherhood comes in spite of the fact that her children are cared for by a nanny, so much so that when her daughter becomes sick during a train trip, she thinks (p 58) "What would Louise do?" The book jacket states that she is "forced to choose between the roles of a mother, wife, lover and intellectual." She chooses the roles of lover and intellectual, and abandons her three-year-old daughter and almost seven-year-old son at a friend's house with whom they've been visiting, to be with Wright, telling the children (p 83), "I'm going on a small vacation...One just for me." The children don't see their mother again for two years. She ponders explaining her choice to her children as (p 140) "not...a cruel self-indulgence" but "an act of love for life" and believes that the kids might end up "...better off, with four happy parents." Late in the novel after a fight with Wright, she tells him (p 302), "The children are what matters now." Yeah, right. What transpires during the children's next visit to Mamah's and Frank's home, Taliesin, may never had happened had she made different choices. This story of a woman who chooses fling over family is, frankly, fluff. Better: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
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