Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan

The Story: While he was still living and working in Oak Park, Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to build a house for Edwin and Mamah Cheney.  It didn’t take long at all for Frank and Mamah to realize that they had a lot in common and start to fall for each other.  It took them a little bit of time- each of them was married with kids at home- but after a couple of years, they decided to up and leave their lives so that they could be together.

To say that this caused a stir in the media is putting it mildly.  Chicago journalists were tracking them as far as Europe just to get a few words into the paper.  Meanwhile, the love that Frank and Mamah had grown was tested time and time again.  Their children, their spouses, their jobs, the media… everything seemed bound and determined to pull them apart.

What I Thought: Like I told you last week, I had a heck of a time getting into this book.  I have a warm place in my heart for Frank Lloyd Wright and I was so excited when I found this at a library book sale. I’d been wanting to read it since it came out.  The first 100 or so pages really were pretty rough on me.  It was just so long-winded.  At that point, I knew from the back of the book that Frank & Mamah fell in love and kind of tore their families apart.  Let’s just get to it already!  Those chapters leading up to that were pretty boring for me and it just seemed like they covered the same ground over and over.

Actually, I guess I found that happening several times throughout the book.  When there was a new “reveal” or a new location or something, the book would get pretty interesting for 50 pages or so, then I’d get bored again and kind of quit reading for awhile.  I just think that the author had researched everything really well and wanted to get all her info into the book somehow, because it was really well researched.  You could tell that she knew her characters, knew her settings, knew her information just to the letter.  I just think that this book could have been a little better had she had a real editing eye and taken out parts that were long -winded, even if they contained an interesting tid-bit of information.

I ended up liking this book, but I didn’t really like it easily.  It was kind of a struggle for me.  I didn’t like the Frank (thought he was a conceded bore) or Mamah (how could she leave those kids?!), so reading about them just made me mad most of the time.  In the end though I was totally compelled by the story itself and plan to read some non-fiction on the subject as soon as I make it to the library.  I did a little bit of poking around on Wikipedia when I was done and really was shocked at the amount of this story that was absolutely true.   Totally wild.

Conclusion: Kind of a mixed review, huh?  I would recommend this with caution to people who are interested in Frank Lloyd Wright, but probably not to too many others.  Just kind of a tough read, however I will keep my eyes opened for other books by Nancy Horan.  For a first novel, I think she did good work and I’d love to see what else she comes up with.