Topic: New Writers Book Club - December 2008: Loving Frank - Nancy Horan

[Cat Mistress El]

Synopsis Abandoning their families and reputations, the lovers fled to Europe and exile. Mamah's actions branded her an unnatural mother and society relished her persecution. For the rest of her life Mamah paid an extraordinary price for moving outside society's rules, in a time that was unforgiving of a woman's quest for fulfilment and personal happiness. Headstrong and honest, her love for Frank was unstoppable. This portrait of her life as his muse and soulmate is a moving, passionate and timeless love story. Reviews '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 . . . is engrossing, provocative reading.' (Scott Turow ) 'A riveting historical novel.' (Seattle Post-Intelligencer )

From the Author
Loving Frank is a work of fiction based on events relating to the love affair of a brilliant, controversial architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah, along with her husband Edwin Cheney, commissioned Wright in 1903 to design a house for their family on East Avenue in Oak Park, Illinois. This book portrays the period 1907 to 1914, during which the Wright/Cheney affair flourished.

Anyone who lives in Oak Park, as I did for 24 years, quickly absorbs information about Frank Lloyd Wright. The village was a growing suburb of Chicago in 1889, when the architect designed a home for his wife Catherine, himself, and their family, which eventually grew to six children. In time, Oak Park became Wright's laboratory during his `prairie period', when he refined, with each new house he created, his evolving ideas about organic architecture. Today, especially in summer, Oak Park's streets are peopled with tourists from around the world who come to see the many houses he designed there and to experience firsthand the architect's legendary spaces. Wright is Oak Park's most famous citizen (Ernest Hemingway runs a close second), and his home and studio complex has been restored to its appearance as it was in 1909, the year the architect left town.

I don't remember when I first learned about Mamah Borthwick Cheney, but I recall vividly a long-ago tour I took of his home and studio, at the end of which someone asked, `Why did Wright leave in 1909?' While the name of Mamah Cheney was not included in the answer, the tour guide explained the awkward truth: the famous architect, who had celebrated in his buildings the values of family and home, had departed for Europe in 1909 with the wife of a client, never to reside permanently with his family again.

Eventually I learned that Mamah and Edwin Cheney's house was just a few blocks north of my own home on East Avenue. I had passed the house many times on my morning walks, unaware of its history. Upon learning a few facts about Mamah, I found myself pausing in front of the low-slung brick house, wanting to know more.

Available in paperback
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Sceptre (12 Jun 2008)
ISBN-10: 0340963379
ISBN-13: 978-0340963371
Current amazon.co.uk price:  £5.99


Reading Notes:

   1.   How would you describe the relationship between Mamah and her children before she left? Do you think that she was a good mother at this point, or do you think she relied on Lizzie too heavily?
   2. What was the appeal of Frank Lloyd Wright to Mamah? Do you think she ever gave her marriage a chance before entering into the affair?
   3. How does Frank's signature architecture echo his views on life?
   4. Do your sympathies lie with Edwin and the children? Has the affair altered them in any way?
   5. What excuses does Mamah give regarding the reasons for the affair? How does she use feminist beliefs to justify her actions?
   6. Could Mamah and her children have been content and happy in Boulder? Does Mamah blame herself for Mattie's death?
   7. Mamah ever remorseful for her actions? Does she ever genuinely consider returning to her children? Do you see her as a selfish woman or do you understand her actions?
   8. When did you begin to discover that things weren't going as planned regarding work for Frank? Did you ever think that this would mark an end to the relationship between Frank and Mamah?
   9. Did life begin to improve for Mamah when she reached Taliesin? Was she ever truly accepted by the community?
  10. Were you shocked by Julian's actions? Did Horan provide any indication of him beginning to snap before Mamah first glimpses the axe?
  11. Do you somehow see Mamah as responsible for the death of her children? Would Edwin place blame upon her?
  12. Why doesn't the media's perception of Mamah alter even after she has died?
  13. Would Mamah have been met with a completely different reaction in contemporary society, or do you think that people still demonise women who leave their families more than men who choose the same path?

[Cat Mistress El]

ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Slw0H1Shh_M

Reader's Guide

1. Do you think that Mamah is right to leave her husband and children in order to pursue her personal growth and the relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright? Is she being selfish to put her own happiness and fulfillment first?

2. Why do you think the author, Nancy Horan, gave her novel the title Loving Frank? Does this title work against the feminist message of the novel? Is there a feminist message?

3. Do you think that a woman today who made the choices that Mamah makes would receive a more sympathetic or understanding hearing from the media and the general public?

4. If Mamah were alive today, would she be satisfied with the progress women have achieved or would she believe there was still a long way to go?

5. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare writes, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/That alters where it alteration finds. .." How does the relationship of Mamah and Frank bear out the sentiments of Shakespeare’s sonnet? What other famous love matches fill the bill?

6. Is Mamah’s story relevant to the women of today?

7. Is Frank Lloyd Wright an admirable figure in this novel? Would it change your opinion of him to know that he married twice more in his life?

8. What about Edwin Cheney, Mamah’s husband? Did he behave as you might have expected after learning of the affair between his wife and Wright?

9. Edwin’s philosophy of life and love might be summed up in the following words from the novel: "Tell her happiness is just practice. If she acted happy, she would be happy." Do you agree or disagree with this philosophy?

10. "Carved over Wright's fireplace in his Oak Park home are the words "Life is Truth." What do you think these words mean, and do Frank and Mamah live up to them?

11. Why do you think Horan chose to give her novel the epigraph from Goethe, "One lives but once in the world."?

12. When Mamah confesses her affair to her friend Mattie, Mattie demands, "What about duty? What about honor?" Discuss some of the different meanings that characters in the novel attach to these two words.

13. In analyzing the failure of the women’s movement to make more progress, Mamah says, "Yet women are part of the problem. We plan dinner parties and make flowers out of crepe paper. Too many of us make small lives for ourselves." Was this a valid criticism at the time, and is it one today?

14. Why does seeing a performance of the opera Mefistofele affect Mamah so strongly?

15. Why is Mamah's friendship with Else Lasker Schuler important in the book?

16. Ellen Key, the Swedish feminist whose work so profoundly influences Mamah, states at one point, "The very legitimate right of a free love can never be acceptable if it is enjoyed at the expense of maternal love." Do you agree?

17. Another of Ellen Key’s beliefs was that motherhood should be recompensed by the state. Do you think an idea like this could ever catch on in America? Why or why not?

18. Is there anything that Frank and Mamah could have done differently after their return to America that would have ameliorated the harsh welcome they received from the press? Have things changed very much in that regard today?

19. What part did racism play in Julian Carlton’s crime? Were his actions the product of pure insanity, or was he goaded into violence?

[Cat Mistress El]

I finally got a copy of this book with the cover in the first post.  That edition came out in June and is now OUT OF PRINT, because there was a second edition released last month, but since I didnt like the cover I really wanted to get this one.  It took some tracking down but I got the last copy in Borders today.

*ellie is happy now*

[Janien]

The lengths book addicts will go to el....

[Cat Mistress El]

yeah when the obsession hits, it hits hard lol

[Janien]

is it the same picture you've posted on this thread?

[Cat Mistress El]

yes.

Quite honestly sometimes the cover is important and sometimes not, but looking at that cover I thought, I want to read that book, but looking at the new cover, I thought it didnt really appeal.  *attention publishers - don't put shitty covers on your books!!!*

I tried to order from three different places to get that book with that cover and all of them came back saying they were out of stock.  Of course bookshops may or may not have one sitting on the shelf.  Borders had one and three copies of the new edition so I was lucky.  It makes no difference at all to the inside but I just got it into my head that I wanted that one

[Janien]

You're obviously a women of discerning taste 

And maybe your copy will be worth more on Amazon Marketplace one day...

[Forgotten]

aww no. I wanted that cover too! Maybe I can still find one...  

[Cat Mistress El]

ring some bookshops - not borders glasgow - and see if they have one on the shelf

[Forgotten]

so is everyone reading this?
I was just thinking about ordering a copy, but wont rush into it if no one else is reading atm as I'd only do it for this discussion (like with Mudbound, although fortunately that turned out to be a great book too).

I don't think I'll ever get round to reading the nov book and am too late now anyway. It really didn't appeal to me. I am liking the sound of this one though so if everyone else is on board I'll try and squeeze it in somehow.

[Janien]

I've got my copy (from the library) ready to read......after Into the Wild.  I'm reading the november choice too though as its about someones business - and i'm pretty bogged down with mine right now...its not my favourite bed time relaxation choice!