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Novel Needs A Foundation

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By CHAD ROEDEMEIER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 15, 2009

"The Women," by T.C. Boyle (Viking Penguin, $28)

It's odd that "The Women," T.C. Boyle's new historical novel about America's greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, seems to have little to say about architecture, or about Wright himself. Boyle lives in a Wright design in California and clearly knows the work, but his Wright doesn't talk much about organic architecture, form and function, or Prairie-style homes in this novel. He seems to be working hard certainly, always drafting designs and pursuing commissions, but usually in another room, just off stage.

"The Women" is not a book about the great man's work; it's a book about the distractions from that work. It's about the sexier, messier stuff, the scandals of his romantic entanglements. "He was one of those sexually charged men," the narrator writes, "who couldn't live without a woman at the center of his life."

It may be a reasonable approach. But the result is a Frank Lloyd Wright who seems a little flat and underdeveloped as a fictional character.

He bounds around the room, works with matchless energy, but what beyond this? What questions about architecture and design fueled his work? A novel about Frank Lloyd Wright that is not immersed in the details of his work and his obsessions seems to have missed the very point of the man.

"The Women" is far from being an unpleasant read, but there's a failure in the fictional architecture that produces a less-than-great novel.

Chad Roedemeier writes for The Associated Press.

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