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Loving Frank: A Novel |  | Author: Nancy Horan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Seller: internationalbooks
Rating:  365 reviews
Sales Rank: 1782
Media: Paperback
Edition: X
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 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 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:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 365
 Historical Fiction At Its Best August 24, 2010
Dona S. Bulluck (Albany, New York USA)
Loving Frank is truly historical fiction at its best. The story of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney is told with depth and insight by Nancy Horan. Although a fictionalized account of their life and time together, Ms. Horan makes the reader feel as if he/she is a witness to all that transpires. Much has been written about Frank Lloyd Wright, but little has been written about Mamah Borthwick Cheney, who was a bright and unconventional woman ahead of her time. Ms. Horan's depiction of their life together is credible and feels very real. Portraying Frank Lloyd Wright through the eyes of the woman he loves allows us to see the legend in a very human way.
Not a shallow love story. August 21, 2010
Jody Kay
Beautifully written. Intreaguing. Lots of story. Powerful w/o maudling emotion. Love, Divorce, children, social attitudes, survival in early 1900's.
A must read for Frank Lloyd Wright fans August 15, 2010
MayYvonne
If you've been to Oak Park/Chicago and seen some of this architect's outstanding buildings, then this book is a must. It's the story of Frank running off to Europe with the attractive wife of one of his clients, and gives a lot of incites to the man and how he thought and operated.
 Less than compelling August 12, 2010
R. Taft (London, UK)
This book was boring. The writer takes us along a poetic meandering of bad choices. I found this book very hard to finish and did put is aside for a few weeks.
 not crazy about it August 11, 2010
ArtHistory500 (California, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I agree with "Overrated" of 2007. Not a page-turner. The author seems to be overlaying the early 20th century characters with our modern standards, thoughts, and ideas, which makes Mamah especially annoying. FLW comes off as an egoist, as I think is well known to be true. He was a genius architect, but no one claims he was anything other than arrogant and selfish. The prose is well written, but you'll find yourself rolling your eyes at the preachiness, repetitiveness, silliness of the thoughts and motives of the heroine (particularly in her discoveries of women's rights and free love, and in her unfathomable obsession with FLW as a lover), and at the anachronistic observations and errors (e.g., Mamah and FLW went to tour the "cathedrals" of Florence; there is only one cathedral in Florence, the seat of the bishop; those other large structures they toured are correctly called "churches"). I'd recommend "Death in a Prairie House" instead, if you are interested in the topic.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 365
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