If it hurts everyone you love, it is not okay – Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

This book is well-written and I would suggest reading it.  But it was a tough one for me for a lot of reasons.

In this historical fiction novel, Horan has tackled Mamah Borwick’s affair with Frank Lloyd Wright and she does a phenomenal job.  But what Horan can’t do, is make two fairly unlikable people likeable. But she does try ever so hard.

Mamah and Frank Lloyd Wright are both married, to other people. They both have children, with other people.  But as this tale always seems to go they fall in love with each other.  And of course the story is off and running.  Mamet takes her children from her home in Chicago to stay with her very pregnant friend in Colorado for the summer.  But what about her great love for Frank? Oh, don’t worry.  The day after her friend has her baby, Mamah leaves her children and rushes to meet Frank in Europe.  She does not see her children for almost two years but instead spends the time finding herself – first in the affair with Frank and then in translating feminist essays for Ellen Key into English.  Meanwhile back in Chicago, reporters hound her family and Frank’s family.  Mamah’s sister is left taking care of the children and her husband finally files a divorce for desertion.  While Mamah and Frank seem to love each other their relationship is volatile  and selfish.  The relationship seemed to inspire Frank’s art but it does not end happily – though it becomes destructive in a way no one could have imagined.

Throughout the novel, Horan mainly focuses on Mamah and her quest to find true happiness.  She does a brilliant job of couching Mamah’s seeming self-absorption with excuses.  She is stuck in a very limiting time for women – they were property, they were often stuck in the stark definitions of mother and wife.  Mamah wants to vote and be heard.  She wants her happiness to matter. But even Horan’s brilliant spin makes this hard to swallow.  I could not overcome the heartbreak she brought on her children and her sister.  I could not overcome the fact that Frank and Mamah seemed to believe that their happiness and finding their true selves was the most important thing – everyone else be damned.

We all have things that we think we could have been given the right chance, the right circumstance, or the right amount of money.  We all have things we think would make us happier.  But as we grow older our lives become more and more intertwined with others – spouses, children, aging parents.  We become responsible, we become integral to the happiness of others.  Though arguably this can be limiting, it is also amazing and meaningful.  Marriages do end.  People cheat.  People act horribly towards each other. But at the end of the day, I think the question is can the cost of any one person’s happiness be worth hurting everyone she loves? And if so, how can that really be happiness.  Horan’s writing does not fail, it is just really a story about selfishness and that is a hard one to sell.