ISBN: 9781408800980

Synopsis Welcome to the troubled, tempestuous world of Frank Lloyd Wright. Scandalous affairs rage behind closed doors, broken hearts are tossed aside, fires rip through the wings of the house and paparazzi lie in wait outside the front door for the latest tragedy in this never-ending saga. This is the home of the great architect of the twentieth century, a man of extremes in both his work and his private life: at once a force of nature and an avalanche of need and emotion that sweeps aside everything in its path.

Sharp, savage and subtle in equal measure, “The Women” plumbs the chaos, horrors and uncontainable passions of a formidable American icon.

Bookclub Review Welcome to the troubled, tempestuous world of Frank Lloyd Wright. Scandalous affairs rage behind closed doors, broken hearts are tossed aside, fires rip through the wings of the house and paparazzi lie in wait outside the front door for the latest tragedy in this never-ending saga. This is the home of the great architect of the twentieth century, a man of extremes in both his work and his private life: at once a force of nature and an avalanche of need and emotion that sweeps aside everything in its path.

Sharp, savage and subtle in equal measure, “The Women” plumbs the chaos, horrors and uncontainable passions of a formidable American icon.

What the bookclub thought:

The group found the book unsatisfactory on several levels. The Japanese apprentice’s strange eyewitness account, the gimmicky use of footnotes and the reverse structure of the narrative. The grisly murders that climax the book were a shock for some. In the end, Frank Lloyd Wright remains an enigma. A couple of members noted that Boyle’s earlier book ‘The Inner Circle’ used a similar approach: a flawed intellectual giant seen through the eyes of an assistant. The book was redeemed by good writing and a story that was engaging at times. Several people enjoyed the passages on morphine addiction in which Wright’s third companion shoots herself up at every turn of fortune. The group was hard put to say who it would recommend the book to. Serious readers and writers perhaps.