The FiFi Report 245

The Women: A Novel  …….by T.C. Boyle
The Women is a dazzling novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, told from the point of view of the women in his life. ‘With this potboiler about the love life of Frank Lloyd Wright, T.C. Boyle, one of America’s most inventive writers, bursts feverishly into the realm of romance fiction. The Women is an altogether manic, occasionally baffling and yet strangely riveting novel. True readers of the genre, be warned: It’s a romance only in spirit. Call it a thinking man’s soap opera. As for the women, well . . . . The fiery loves that populated the life of America’s premier architect make excellent grist for an over-the-top melodrama. Wright’s private life was shocking, lurid, the stuff of pulp fiction. World readers gasped over the wicked details. He had always been a flirt and womanizer. Wright’s women all turn out to be strikingly similar: They are conniving harridans with big scores to settle. And though it’s impossible not to read on (so striking and wild is the true story), Wright, too, becomes something of a mask: a cruel, self-absorbed, oversexed genius. Even his famous edifices never quite come alive. So much for the material. But, oh, the writing! It’s the writing that pulls you through, and it’s the writing that will reward you in the last scene of this altogether predictable and (sometimes deliciously) overwrought novel. Boyle is a marvel at descriptive prose. Through the congeries that makes up this maddening maze of a novel, you find yourself turning the page and go on from scene to scene, marveling at a turn of phrase or some well-articulated emotion. As with a fickle lover, it’s the words that keep you there.
$16 amazon.com Publisher: Viking Adult (February 10, 2009)