After reading TC Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" and loving it so much that it is on my top 10 all-time favorite list, I expected to thoroughly enjoy "The Women." However, I did not. In fact, I ended up reading it in two stages, months apart. Although Boyle writes with such insight, the technique in which he tells the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and his "women" put me off. The story is told from the perspective of one of his apprentices, Tadashi Sato, and is shared chronologically backwards. As I read, I wished that instead of each 'woman's' story being told in the third person, it was relayed first hand by them as the first person. The reader does get the gist of how repetitive the loves of Wright were, and how all of them excused his treatment of them on behalf of genius. He was a larger than life figure and I did appreciate that fact. After reading "Loving Frank" last year and enjoying Nancy Horan's depiction of Wright's life with his mistress Mamah, it might have also tainted my view of Boyle's book. However, I did learn an interesting fact: Wright's second son Lloyd was the creator and founder of Lincoln Logs. ( )

T.C. Boyle’s new novel, The Women, is a fictionalized account of the adult years of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Writing in first person, Boyle chose as his narrator Tadashi Sato, a Japanese apprentice to Wright. The narrative revolves around the women in the architect’s life: his three wives and his mistress, Mamah Cheney. Although Tadashi Sato professes a great deal of admiration for his mentor throughout the book, ultimately Wright is not painted in a flattering light. His genius is acknowledged, but he comes across as an egotistical scoundrel. He is completely unscrupulous about money and his business dealings. Wright also justifies his scandalous treatment of women by his disregard for convention and his belief in the power of love. Yet when young Tadashi falls in love with a Caucasion apprentice working at his estate, Wright intervenes and puts an end to the relationship. Clearly the right to defy convention does not apply to everyone. Aside from Wright’s first wife, Kitty, I found all of the women to be equally self centered and unsympathetic.

The organization of the book was interesting. Boyle begins the novel with Wright’s third wife, and each section of the story goes backward in time to the previous woman in Wright’s life. This technique allows tension to build and enables the book to end dramatically with the murder of Mamah Cheney in 1914 and the destruction of their home, one of Wright’s architectural masterpieces. As can be expected of T.C. Boyle, the book was well written and engaging from beginning to end. ( )

The Women by TC Boyle the historical fiction account of the women in Frank LLyod Wright's life outside of his marriage with Catherine Wright.

Boyle's narrator tells the story in reverse chronological order which is a wise choice because the most sensational part of the story would take place in the beginning third of the novel and the latter two thirds would seem quite anti-climactic.

The downfall of the novel is the narrator who is a Japanese apprentice who lives at the Taliesen compound for a relatively short period of time. Because the narrator was not with Wright over the course of the novel, his information then comes from an Irish biographer grandson-in-law. The whole mechanism is very convoluted and does not give the reader the sense of an eye-witness account that I suspect was Boyle's intention.

In addition to the odd choice of narrator, a further distraction lies in the narrator's use of footnotes, which are his own personal asides. The are supposed to be informative and/or witty, but they are simply odd and off-putting. The ultimate effect is that the reader is frequently pulled back to reality and reminded that this is a fictional account of what happened which makes the story less gripping.

This is unfortunate because the material Boyle has been given is really rich. When the reader is not being thrust back into reality by Boyle's odd conventions the story is compelling and we learn not only about these three very different women, but through their eyes we get a glimpse of who Wright may have been in his private life.

How much credit should be given to Boyle for this story is not clear. The bare bones of this novel were gifted to him by the actions of real people, and while his ability to fill in the gaps that history has left creates a fluid and interesting novel, his prose lacks a lyrical quality and a certain depth. As readers we are given very little insight on how the lives and choices of these characters translate into the humanness that connects us all regardless of social and chronological differences.

Sometimes a novel is so enjoyable that one is able to overlook it's shortcomings, but that is not the case with The Women. While it would probably be enjoyable for those who already have an interest in Wright, it's faults cause it to miss its mark with the average reader. ( )

Having just returned from my time living in Chicago I was highly intrigued to read Boyle's novel about Frank Lloyd Wright and the women in his life. Despite the fact that it took me time to finish, it was a fascinating read and I was particularly captivated by Mamah Bothwick. Boyle did a great job of making it all interesting, whether or not it was true. ( )

Who were the women that were paired with that towering talent and ego, Frank Lloyd Wright? This novel attempts to delve into the question. Boyle, (who lives in a Wright house), works his way back in time, and paints a picture of a man who was faithful to his own libertine ideals and to his beloved Taliesen, but not to the humans that found themselves within his sphere of influence. ( )