Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Blogland Bookclub for September

So in keeping with Workin That Preppy's book club that she started over the summer, I thought I would keep it going. I really enjoy reading and enjoy all sorts of books. This one I had read a little blurb on and it sounded like something I would like to read and it also sounded like something I would like to know more about.

So, even though this book is a work of fiction, Frank Lloyd Wright is still a very real person. This is a hard cover book, which I am not usually a big fan of because the bags I carry are heavy enough, but this was an exception.

OF course, what would an online book club without a little present for good readers and commenters. . .so submit a comment to the post on September 21st regarding the book club and I will have the boy draw the winner of a wonderful gift!

September Blogland Book Club Pick. . .Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

From Publishers Weekly
Horan's ambitious first novel is a fictionalization of the life of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, best known as the woman who wrecked Frank Lloyd Wright's first marriage. Despite the title, this is not a romance, but a portrayal of an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century. Frank and Mamah, both married and with children, met when Mamah's husband, Edwin, commissioned Frank to design a house. Their affair became the stuff of headlines when they left their families to live and travel together, going first to Germany, where Mamah found rewarding work doing scholarly translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key's books. Frank and Mamah eventually settled in Wisconsin, where they were hounded by a scandal-hungry press, with tragic repercussions. Horan puts considerable effort into recreating Frank's vibrant, overwhelming personality, but her primary interest is in Mamah, who pursued her intellectual interests and love for Frank at great personal cost. As is often the case when a life story is novelized, historical fact inconveniently intrudes: Mamah's life is cut short in the most unexpected and violent of ways, leaving the narrative to crawl toward a startlingly quiet conclusion. Nevertheless, this spirited novel brings Mamah the attention she deserves as an intellectual and feminist. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
In 1904, Frank Lloyd Wright started work on a house for an Oak Park couple, Edwin and Mamah Cheney, and, before long, he and Mamah had begun a scandalous affair. In her first novel, Horan, viewing the relationship from Mamah’s perspective, does well to avoid serving up a bodice-ripper for the smart set. If anything, she cleaves too faithfully to the sources, occasionally giving her story the feel of a dissertation masquerading as a novel. But she succeeds in conveying the emotional center of her protagonist, whom she paints as a proto-feminist, an educated woman fettered by the role of bourgeois matriarch. Horan best evokes Mamah’s troubled personality by means of delicately rendered reflections on the power of the natural world, from which her lover drew inspiration: watching her children rapturously observe a squirrel as it pulls apart wheat buds or taking pride in the way the house that Wright built for them in Wisconsin frames the landscape.
Copyright © 2007

4 comments:

Libby said...

I'm in! Provided I can do all my reading for class at the same time. And, may I say, those calzones looks delish.

Suz said...

email me about details of your US Open trip

jillskict said...

I need your email though in order to do that. . .

RED said...

I think I'll have to add that book to the list! I need to get some serious time into reading!
Looks like a great read!

 
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