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Loving Frank Audio CD – CD, February 5, 2013
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- Print length0 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBrilliance Audio
- Publication dateFebruary 5, 2013
- Dimensions5 x 0.38 x 5.5 inches
- ISBN-101469234246
- ISBN-13978-1469234243
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Product details
- Publisher : Brilliance Audio; Abridged edition (February 5, 2013)
- Language : English
- Audio CD : 0 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1469234246
- ISBN-13 : 978-1469234243
- Item Weight : 4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5 x 0.38 x 5.5 inches
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About the author
Nancy Horan, a former journalist and longtime resident of Oak Park, Illinois, now lives and writes on an island in Puget Sound.
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Mamah Cheney could have had it all but she was sideswiped by her lust for life on the fastlane, the big ego of Frank Lloyd Wright, the promise of being the polyglot sidekick of Swedish born suffragist Ellen Key, and in the end, she had nothing for herself and her two (three including her orphaned nephew) children who she left behind to find love and fulfillment with the iconic architect.
This fictional account of a love story gone tragically wrong and painful, leaves me reeling with wonder, I cannot help but raise some points that challenge thinking outside the home, domesticity, community, society and even world affairs.
First of all, can a mother really be so wildly in love so as to leave her very young children behind to traipse all over Berlin, Italy and Japan to pursue finding herself and her paramour's budding career? Given that Frank Lloyd Wright was really brilliant (after the fact), was he really worth it? Her marriage to Edwin Cheney was flailing but was she really really that unhappy? She had little Martha with Edwin while she was consorting with Frank! I think it was a case of moral fiber fraying and falling dangerously to an abyss that she couldn't get enough fortitude to figure herself out of.
Granted that it was the zeitgeist of women's emancipation and feminism, the attendant focus on lack of rights to get out of bad marriages, lack of equal pay for men and women, identity issues surrounding motherhood and caring for children, did Mamah really blaze into the forefront to liberate women of all ages for all time? Or did she just end up exonerating herself?
Was her sacrifice worth the cause? Her alliance with Ellen Key's cause was almost a chance event in her search for herself and her raison d'etre for villyfying her home and turning her loved one's lives upside down. The Swedish suffragist had modern ideas about women's morality and new feminist roles, I think Mamah was eagerly quick to translate Key's ideas as seen through her private moral dilemma, adultery. In Berlin, Key was tagged as the "wise fool of the feminist movement", vacillating between being a protector of children and the essence of mothering as a human species-forwarding endeavor versus a woman's fulfilling her happiness through achieving her personhood through being allowed the choices and liberties to propel one's potential. I think Ellen Key was wise, period. In Nancy, France, she had told Mamah to find herself first, without Frank, and pursue her own niche in the world, otherwise Frank will just be another "diversion". It was Mamah who could not find her moral compass and was torn, time and time again between her love for her offspring and her love for Frank and herself. It is a pity that her "soulful" translations of Ellen Key's work coulda-woulda been heard by a bigger audience had she sent it to The Atlantic Monthly and not published with those who were affiliated with Frank Lloyd Wright's folios.
Horan's skill in writing allowed for her characters to be heard, to be seen in both good and bad lights, she allowed all their foibles, their humanity to filter through the puritanical times when society was quick to judge moral turpitude. She allowed her readers to look for understanding and to be compassionate; that her characters were flawed, slaves for higher ideals of truth and beauty and most of all, love. But in being so, they chose paths that were dangerously selfish and hurtful to others.
I will not be quick to say that the tragedy of Mamah's end in Taliesin is divine retribution, but simply a horrific event in the life that already has gone through baptism by fire, a fall from grace that happens when people are just going about their daily lives because people are the way they are, fallen from the very start.
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Und Mamah Borthwicks Liebhaber ist Star-Architekt Frank Lloyd Wright, der ebenfalls Frau und Kinder sitzen lässt. Horan erzählt eine wahre Geschichte, ausstaffiert mit erfundenen Details und Dialogen. Man lebt wirklich mit den Figuren, kennt ihre Spleens und ihre Räumlichkeiten, ahnt ihre Reaktionen und Gedanken im voraus. Alles klingt wie eben erst passiert und völlig plausibel.
Oder fast plausibel. Die Briefe und Dialoge wirken manchmal zu geistreich, zu elegant, zu komponiert, aber das steigert den Unterhaltungswert dieses historischen Romans von 2007, bei dem fast jedes Wort perfekt sitzt.
Mitunter packt Horan etwas zu viel Bedeutung in einzelne Gespräche, wenn sie die Gefühle der Hauptperson bloßlegen will; oder in einzelne Ereignisse, wenn Mamah Borthwick sich selbst mit der Gretchen-Figur in einer Faust-Oper vergleicht. Das Thema Frauenbewegung erscheint etwas leitartikelhaft. Freilich, Horan beschreibt zwei hochintelligente, kultivierte, gebildete und zugleich sehr emotionale, kreative Menschen, die sich unerschrocken gegen den herrschenden Komment stellten - ein dankbares Thema für eine interessante Erzählung.
Horan erzählt im Prinzip chronologisch, nutzt aber vor allem in der ersten Buchhälfte viele Gelegenheiten zu schnellen Sprüngen in die Vergangenheit, um dann gegen Ende des (stets kurzen) Kapitels wieder in die erzählte Gegenwart zu schwenken. Das wirkt auf den ersten Blick kurzweilig und elegant, verwirrt aber öfter auch, wenn sie Geschehnisse mischt, die mehrere Jahre auseinanderliegen. Allerdings gibt es fast keine Andeutungen auf noch bevorstehende Ereignisse. Ansonsten wirkt der Roman blendend konstruiert: Dialoge, Gedanken, Zusammenfassungen und Detailschilderungen fließen nahtlos.
Verblüffend, wie Deutschland in diesem Roman erscheint: Bei ihren Berlin-Aufenthalten 1909 und 1910 empfindet Borthwick Deutschland offenbar als toleranten, freigeistigen Platz, in dem auch Exzentriker in der Gesellschaft willkommen sind. Einmal sitzt sie unweit von Kaiser Wilhelm im Hotel Adlon.
Horans Buch verkaufte sich gut in den USA und erhielt gute Besprechungen. Die meisten Profi- und Hobby-Rezensenten diskutieren jedoch vor allem das Leben der Figuren - auch das Ende wird genannt - und gehen kaum auf Qualitäten oder Schwächen des Romans ein.
Aufmerksam wurde ich auf Horans Buch erst durch die Lektüre von T.C. Boyles The Women (vier Sterne), ein historischer Roman, der ebenfalls von Frank Lloyd Wright und seinen Frauen handelt. Offenbar wussten Boyle und Horan nichts voneinander; Boyle wurde später fertig und las Nancy Horans Version der Geschichte bewusst nicht.
Beide Autoren kamen auf ihr Thema, weil sie täglich Lloyd-Häuser sahen: T.C. Boyle bewohnt ein Wright-Haus in Südkalifornien; Horan lebte in Oak Park, Illinois, das Wohnviertel mit der höchsten Dichte an Wright-Häusern, einschließlich der früheren Wohnhäuser von Wright und Borthwick. Meine Taschenbuchausgaben der beiden Bücher haben ähnliche Titelbilder, die mit dem typischen Stil der Wright-Fenster spielen.
Im Vergleich zu Boyle wirkt Horans Roman reifer, sensibler, er befasst sich etwas mehr mit Wrights Architektur und zielt weniger auf Knalleffekte. Horan schildert weit detaillierter, weil sie einen kürzeren Zeitraum als Boyle behandelt. Sie skizziert auch Nebenfiguren sehr plastisch, aber nicht effektheischend, und sehr intim beschreibt sie die Beziehung zwischen Borthwick und ihren Kindern, die Borthwick zugunsten Wrights verlässt.
Ich habe beide Bücher auf Englisch gelesen und hatte bei Horan weniger Vokabelprobleme, weil sie nicht mit Exotikwortschatz prunken will. Meine Loving Frank-Ausgabe von Ballantine richtet sich an Lesezirkel und enthält mehrere kurze Nachworte und ein längeres, interessantes Interview zur Entstehung des Romans. Die Internetseite mit dem englischen Romantitel zeigt historische Fotos und zwei kurze, halb interessante Videos zur Autorin und zu Oak Park.
It was 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, when Mamah Borthwick Cheney and her husband Edwin Cheney returned from their honeymoon. Edwin was a successful engineer, President of Wagner Electric Company. He was a kind man and rarely complained. All he wanted in life was a home full of children, friends and good times. Edwin was the one who pursued Mamah until she agreed to marry him. Mamah was an educated woman of thirty and she was a translator who spoke several languages. They moved into the house she grew up in called Queen Anne. Her father was very lonely since the death of Mamah's mother, so he was happy to have them. He continued to work. Mamah had two sisters, Jessie and Lizzie, who came to visit their father. One day, when her father returned from work, he went to take a nap and never woke up. A year later, her sister Jessie died giving birth to a baby girl, who was later named Jessica. The father of the baby could not properly care for the baby, so Edwin, Mamah and Lizzie would bring up the baby girl. Soon after, Edwin and Mamah had their own child, a baby boy named John.
Edwin wanted a new and modern home, so he commissioned the renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright to design the home. Mamah and Catherine Wright belonged to the same club. Mamah spoke with Catherine and she arranged a meeting for Edwin and Mamah at Frank's studio. When they showed up at Frank's studio, they saw a very handsome man with wavy hair and intelligent eyes, who was around thirty-five years old. He was known to people as a man who was eccentric, arrogant and narcissistic. The main architect, who worked for Frank was a woman named Marion Mahoney. Together they worked on a sketch and by the end of the afternoon, Edwin and Mamah had a sketch they took home. The house would have two levels. They would live on the upper level and Mamah's sister, Lizzy,would live downstairs, the basement.
Frank Wright had designed a house around the existing trees on the lot. The dining room, living room and library flowed into one another. A great fireplace would stand at the heart of the house. There would be window seats all around that would accommodate a crowd. There would also be a wall of stained-glass doors across the front of the house that would open onto a large terrace surrounded by a brick wall for privacy. Mamah was the one who worked with Frank at his studio and by the time Edwin and Mamah moved into the house, the Wrights had become their friends. Frank Wright called the house "the good times house."
It was during the construction of the house that Frank and Mamah became attracted to each other and ended up having an affair. Mamah was in love with Frank. Whether Frank loved Mamah would be debatable. Mamah wanted more out of life than being a mother. She was an independent woman, well educated and a feminist. She wanted her freedom, so that she could improve her status as a translator and become well known. Frank and Mamah decided to leave their marriages. Frank had six children with Catherine and Mamah and Edwin now had two children, John and Martha. So Frank and Mamah took off for Europe abandoning their children and spouses. This move was the talk of the town and their lives would never be the same. You will be amazed and shocked as you read on.
This novel is about love, motherhood, loss, adultery and the need to find one's personal strengths at all costs.
Nancy Horan is an outstanding and gifted writer. Loving Frank is her debut novel. Her characters are strong and full of energy. Ms. Horan grips you with her eloquent prose until you are in for the shock of your life. This book is unforgettable.
Loving Frank is one of the best books I have ever read. I highly recommend it.
I was fascinated by the way the book portrayed society's reaction to a well-to-do wife leaving her kind-but-dull husband and two children to run away with her lover. Mamah feels stifled and unfulfilled by her life as a wife and mother and Frank offers a chance to escape from it (leaving behind his own wife and six kids in the process). It's hard to feel sorry for either of them but Nancy Horan makes a good job of explaining how Mamah felt she had no choice but to do what she did, if she wanted to be with the man she loved.
A little tip - don't do what I did and get so interested in FLW's life and work that you go and look him up on Wikipedia, only to inadvertently discover how the book ends before you've finished it (well duh, it is based on a true story). It didn't spoil it for me though, the ending is still really powerful and shocking. Nancy Horan has obviously done a lot of research into the couple and this is a really interesting and thought-provoking debut novel.
The author gives voice to their side of the story and this of course is the fictitious part of the book, although much research into the facts has clearly been done.
Questions arise. Undoubtedly leaving everything behind took some guts, especially at the time, especially for a woman. The author is never judgmental though. I think her reconstruction of the events is quite plausible and she certainly makes the reader visualize the inner quality and beauty of their true love, their intellectual affinity, their remorse and sense of guilt towards their families. It is an engaging love story, ending abruptly several years later. If you still do not know why (that is when facts come into the picture), I shall not spoil it for you.
The book also offers an interesting insight into Mr. Lloyd Wright's work, from a different perspective. Well done to the author.