The Women is the story about the women, geez how tacky, that Frank Lloyd Wright, brilliant architect, had in his life. It is an interesting story, if you can stand how it is constructed and if you can get past the numerous deragatory references and images of Native Americans that Boyle justifies on his site (after I asked him) as coming from the thoughts and viewpoints of his characters, chiefly a Japanese man. I mean, how is it that a Japanese man, born and raised and only visiting here to learn from Wright, has American Indians on his mind so much that he uses them for violent and aggressive metaphors and similes? Hmmmmmmm!
Anyway, the book tells the story of Frank’s loves backwards. I think this is because the most riveting aspect of Frank’s life and loves is the period when his mistress/wife Mamah was murdered, along with her children and several of Frank’s draftspeople and Taliesin was burned down by the murderer. And yes, American Indians are used as similes to describe this heinous act.
By not telling us about this trauma, we miss something when reading about Frank’s later decisions and involvements with other women. For me, what would have been riveting would have been in understanding how Frank had survived this very real and horrific tragedy in his life by seeing how his life had unfolded after the loss.
But most annoying of all, is telling us that the narrator, the Japanese man, is collaborating with another man, an Irish-American to narrate this story and then writing all of the scenes from one of the other character’s viewpoints. I never could get into this until I worked hard to forget the Japanese guy was speaking at all, and just let the scene be told by the character of the moment (which is what happens anyway). I’m thinking about the loss to the story with this technique as I compare it to The Great Gatsby and Nick telling us the story, but Fitzgerald staying with Nick’s viewpoint.
Please, all you authors out there, do not latch onto this new technique!!! Some of these fads should be allowed to disappear forever.
The footnotes are annoying also until you simply realize that the author couldn’t figure out how to retain the suuposedly chosen narrator’s voice without them, since the story is really told by the character of the moment, whether it be Frank, Miriam, Olgivanna etc. and hardly ever the supposed narrator. The Japanese guy that hates American Indians.
Here is my list of words that I had to look up in a dictionary because Boyle is fond of adverbs and adjectives and flowery writing and cannot use common vocabulary like Kingsolver manages to:
- filmic
- impecuniosity
- melliflous
- maculate
- orotund
- dehiscence
- deracination
- umbrage
- animadversions
- incarnadine
- pugilistic
- fulmination
- ordure
- rubicund
- ichor
- prestidigitation
- opprobrium
- fumarole
- pellucid
- tintinnabulation
- adumbration
- oleaginous
- luteous
- crepitus
- ausculated
- dischronic
- oneiric
- Lucullan
- dubiety
- charnel
- abstersion
- emendations
- canescent
Here is the image I found most offensive. Catherine just had a fight with Frank. She lives in one of the first houses he designed in Chicago and it is the 1930′s. Frank has fallen for his client, Mamah and wants a divorce from Kitty, the mother of Frank’s children. Frank is a skank if you are wondering, like Tiger Woods.
Catherine is doing the narrating here (even though it’s supposed to be the Japanese draftsman):
“The night came down and lay across the roof like a presence out of the forest primeval that had once stood here, on this lot, while Indians beat their squaws and stripped the flesh from their enemies with knives of stone.”
Sure, this