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The Women

A Novel

Author T.C. Boyle
Paperback
$18.00 US
5.5"W x 8.4"H x 0.98"D   | 15 oz | 28 per carton
On sale Dec 29, 2009 | 464 Pages | 978-0-14-311647-9
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “riveting” (The Wall Street Journal) and “wonderfully entertaining” (The Boston Globe) account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, told through the experiences of the four women who loved him.
 
“Boyle handles the big themes—Wright the genius battling an uncomprehending, philistine world and Wright the man loving and loathing his women—with extraordinary brio.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
Is it easy to live with a genius?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, or romantic. He never did what was expected, and he never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions.
 
Wright’s triumphs and defeats were always tied to the women he loved: Olgivanna Milanoff, an imperious Montenegrin beauty who was a student of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and was known by Wright’s apprentices as “the Dragon Lady”; Maude Miriam Noel, a passionate Southern belle with a mean temper and a fondness for morphine; the spirited Mamah Borthwick Cheney, tragically murdered at Wright’s Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914; and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin, with whom he had six children.
 
T.C. Boyle deftly captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a sexy, gripping drama about marriage, the bargains men and women make, and the privileges and pitfalls of genius and fame.
"Wonderfully entertaining . . . In his inexhaustible capacity to beguile us as a natural storyteller, T.C. Boyle is surely one of our most American novelists since Mark Twain, and one of our very best."
--The Boston Globe

"Despite dozens of writers' attempts to capture Wright's story, it seems safe to say that none have rendered it with more crackling life than Mr. Boyle."--The Wall Street Journal

"Boyle at his best . . . Love, not architecture, is the focus here. . . . A mesmerizing story of women who invest everything, at great risk, in that mysterious 'bank of feeling' named Frank Lloyd Wright. . . . Boyle doesn't just fiddle around with familiar autobiographical material. He inhabits the space of Wright's life and times with particular boldness."
--The New York Times Book Review 
T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara. View titles by T.C. Boyle

About

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “riveting” (The Wall Street Journal) and “wonderfully entertaining” (The Boston Globe) account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, told through the experiences of the four women who loved him.
 
“Boyle handles the big themes—Wright the genius battling an uncomprehending, philistine world and Wright the man loving and loathing his women—with extraordinary brio.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
Is it easy to live with a genius?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, or romantic. He never did what was expected, and he never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions.
 
Wright’s triumphs and defeats were always tied to the women he loved: Olgivanna Milanoff, an imperious Montenegrin beauty who was a student of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and was known by Wright’s apprentices as “the Dragon Lady”; Maude Miriam Noel, a passionate Southern belle with a mean temper and a fondness for morphine; the spirited Mamah Borthwick Cheney, tragically murdered at Wright’s Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914; and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin, with whom he had six children.
 
T.C. Boyle deftly captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a sexy, gripping drama about marriage, the bargains men and women make, and the privileges and pitfalls of genius and fame.

Praise

"Wonderfully entertaining . . . In his inexhaustible capacity to beguile us as a natural storyteller, T.C. Boyle is surely one of our most American novelists since Mark Twain, and one of our very best."
--The Boston Globe

"Despite dozens of writers' attempts to capture Wright's story, it seems safe to say that none have rendered it with more crackling life than Mr. Boyle."--The Wall Street Journal

"Boyle at his best . . . Love, not architecture, is the focus here. . . . A mesmerizing story of women who invest everything, at great risk, in that mysterious 'bank of feeling' named Frank Lloyd Wright. . . . Boyle doesn't just fiddle around with familiar autobiographical material. He inhabits the space of Wright's life and times with particular boldness."
--The New York Times Book Review 

Author

T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara. View titles by T.C. Boyle