By: Nancy Horan Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged Lib Ed Average Rating: Binding: Audio CD Format: Audiobook, CD, Unabridged Label: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged Lib Ed Number of Items: 12 Publication Date: August 07, 2007 Release Date: August 07, 2007
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 groundbreaking historical 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 Mamah’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, and her unforgettable journey, marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leads inexorably to this novel’s stunning conclusion.
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
Interesting fictionalized bio 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.
Loved it! This is the best book I have read in a long time! I could not put it down. I am recommending it to all my friends.
Loving Frank This is a very well researched and written book. You won't remain neutral about these characters. Upon ending the book, you will want more--more about Frank Lloyd Wright's ensuing decades.
Not Loving "Loving Frank" How is it possible to bore a reader to death with a story of celebrity, artistic acheivement ,passionate love, adultery, and murder? Just ask Nancy Horan, the author of "Loving Frank", the story of the scandalous, and ultimately tragic, love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mameh Cheney. Let's give Horan her due.....she is consistent. She never misses an opportunity to gloss over a conflict or miss a dramatic moment. In one sentence she decides to leave her husband and small children; in half a page we have the account of murder and mayhem that left seven innocents slaughtered. The book reads more like a student research paper than a book of fiction.
well don I have enjoyed the book but felt it was somewhat of a slow read. Thoughful and reflective.
Anything Goes Trivia
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Trevor
