As in
The Inner Circle,
the narrator of this book is a fictional character—one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s
apprentices who really did mostly grunt work around the Taliesin estate. However, this piece of historical fiction is
not so much about the great American architect as it is about his lover Mamah,
whom he called his soul mate, and two of his wives—Miriam and Olgivanna. Boyle, who lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright
house, tells their stories in reverse order, and I liked this format. In this way I got to know Olgivanna while
Miriam was still in the picture, then Miriam while Wright was still mourning
Mamah’s tragic death, and finally Mamah.
I think Boyle told Mamah’s story last, because hers is the most
poignant, and her death is certainly a defining moment for Wright. Wright’s first wife, Kitty, is in the
background for all of these stories, but she is not really the villain. That role falls to Miriam, a closet drug
addict who made Frank and Olgivanna’s life a living hell. She didn’t want to divorce him, but she
didn’t want to live with him, either. She
excelled at creating drama and mayhem, mostly with a stroke of her pen. Frank himself seemed to drift from one
scandal to another, while dodging bankruptcy and establishing his well-founded
reputation as a genius in his field.
This book is rather long but rarely drags, with Boyle at the helm. However, I did not like the myriad footnotes constantly
disrupting the flow. I often missed the
asterisk indicator but then read the footnote when I finished the page and had
to skim the page again to find the passage that warranted the footnote. I read a hardback copy, and I can’t imagine
how the electronic version handled the footnotes. Some of the best anecdotes are in the
footnotes, though, including one where Wright declares himself the world’s
greatest architect during a court proceeding.
Another footnote reminds us that one of Wright’s sons invented Lincoln
Logs. If you skip over the footnotes,
you will be missing out on some good stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment