Review: The Women

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T.C. Boyle is the author of 20 works of fiction, including World's End (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), The Tortilla Curtain, A Friend of the Earth, Drop City (a finalist for the National Book Award), The Inner Circle, Tooth and Claw and Talk Talk. His work has been translated into 25 languages. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

POSTED: 24 APRIL 2009

T.C. Boyle, The Women

(Bloomsbury; 421pp paperback; $32.95)

It seems Frank Lloyd Wright was incapable of “delayed gratification”, whether it be for flash cars, high living or beautiful women — a trait which Wikipedia describes as a symptom of emotional un-intelligence. TC Boyle’s portrayal of FLW through the eyes of “his women” fits the bill on that score — great artist and architect he may have been, but, on the personal front, Frank Lloyd Wright was a serial offender.

Boyle’s novel, The Women, craftily exposes the character of FLW through the stories of his four wives.

First, Kitty Tobin — young when they married and devoted to him, but six children diverted her energies and his attention, until the inevitable. The amours, flings and flirtations she resignedly tolerated led to a love affair that destroyed their marriage.

Second, Mamah Cheney — his avowed soul mate. Outcast from society because of their illicit love affair and her abandonment of her children, she is savagely murdered at Taliesian, the house Frank designed and built in Wisconsin as a refuge from a judgmental society.

Third, Miriam — artist herself, impetuous and crazily passionate, drug-addled and unrelentingly vindictive. She mesmerises Frank with gushingly sentimental letters and wildly bohemian behaviour as he reels from the aftermath of the Taliesin slaughter.

And fourth, the dancer, Olgivanna Milanoff — so much younger than Frank, but spiritually and intellectually strong enough to successfully become the final life partner of FLW, or “Wrieto-san” as he is called by the narrator of the story.

Which brings us to Tadashi Sato, an honest and forthright Japanese student from Harvard, who comes to pre-WW2 Taliesin to join the Master as a paying “apprentice”. The apprentice group is a FLW scheme to bring in some much needed cash — the acquisition of which we discern as a constant pressure and hassle in the life of FLW.

Tadashi begins his tale with the fourth wife, Olgivanna, or Olga, who is mistress of the House when he arrives, and the story is told backward through the reverse sequence of wives. It is a useful structure that assists understanding and enhances insight, and which builds dramatic tension as we are drip-fed hints of the heinous crime at the first Taliesin, the full story remaining teasingly undisclosed until the last chapters.

Tadashi, and his writer son-in-law O’Flaherty-San, lend an authenticity to the “biographical” tale. Tadashi is the outsider, an unbiased observer, who we can trust. The use of footnotes can be annoying in a novel, but in this case you can live with the device. It creates the illusion of bona fides for Tadashi — the perception of objectivity, of academic credibility — that the “facts” are reliable.

Of course, Tadashi is just as much under the spell of FLW as are the rest at Taliesin, evidenced by him willingly remaining as an apprentice (working as architect, draftsman, cleaner, cook, waiter, chauffer, and general hand, all for which he paid) for half a dozen years, and who would have voluntarily stayed on longer had his nationality and a world war not collided.

His admiration of FLW survives — indeed thrives! — despite the exploitation and the controlling interference of both FLW and Olga in the lives of the young apprentices, an intrusion which costs Tadashi a love relationship that he continues to mourn.

The determination of FLW and Olga to crush romance and maintain impeccable “moral standards” at Taliesin presents an interesting conundrum. Their behaviour had flouted convention and at times threatened Frank’s freedom. FLW railed against the constraining mores of the social establishment. In a weird cycle he repeated the same behaviours with women, finances, and art that aggravated polite society and denied him social acceptance.

It was okay for him to challenge the norm, yet not so the mortals around him who, he bizarrely concluded, may bring discredit to his work.

It is the story we read so often about “great men”. They may be bastards, but they are so in such an intoxicating way ... to the extent that those around them forgive the failings because of the compelling genius.

Getting into this novel is not easy but the story and the characters slyly draw you in — a clear sign of good writing, and TC Boyle is well known for that.

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