T. Corraghessan Boyle is one of my favourite authors, an exuberant stylist who tackles ambitious topics, often from intriguing angles. Being a beginning student of the arcane (but surrounding) subject of architecture, I snapped up his latest, The Women, for it’s a brave fictional look at the life of an architectural great, Frank Lloyd Wright. Boyle frames his dense, muscular examination of key periods of Wright’s life in an intriguing manner: the overarching piece is his Japanese-American apprentice Tadashi Sato, who then writes his mentor and hero’s biography through imagined scenes of Wright’s four key women. And what different women they are: Mamah, an early love brutally murdered; first wife Kitty, devoted and wrecked by betrayal; Miriam, southern beauty, leech and drug addict; and Olgivanna, resolute dancer from Montenegro. With typical verve, the plot works its way backwards, depicting dramatic scenes of love, destruction, abandonment, despair and genius. Throughout, Taliesyn, Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous building, his Wisconsin haven and passion. I read The Women fast – all T. Corraghessan Boyle’s books suck you onward at great pace.
Yet something was missing and that was Frank Lloyd Wright himself. Sure, we get plenty of him – in public, in love, in desperation – but somehow the man himself eluded me. More to the point, his muse and creativity seemed to always lie outside the narrative frame. It is as if we see him but only as a privileged documentary maker would. By focusing on the four women at the centre of his life, the architect is allowed to escape. I’m forced to conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that The Women is most eloquent and absorbing but ultimately short on illumination.