(Publisher’s Weekly, Feb. 23)
After exploring the lives of cereal king Kellogg (The Road to Wellville) and sex researcher Kinsey (The Inner Circle), Boyle turns his attention to Frankly Lloyd Wright, whose story is told through the experiences of the four women who loved him. The author’s cross-country tour winds up March 1 in Santa Barbara, where he lives in the George C. Stewart house, Wright’s first private residence in California. Publisher’s Weekly starred review called the novel “a lush, dense and hyperliterate book – in other words, vintage Boyle.” After four printings, Viking has shipped close to 55,000 copies.
Order your signed first edition of The Women by T.C. Boyle from www.vjbooks.com
Today we are promoting nearly a dozen titles that for some reason got overlooked . . . either we missed giving them the attention they deserved, or perhaps, you didn’t see the newsletter. We thought we’d give them another chance, and we are cutting the price on each of them by five bucks. All eleven titles are exciting and merit another look, but please give your special attention to three of them.
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The Manual of Detection combines intricacy and thoughtfulness with the page-turning excitement of a detective thriller…. This novel is a master puzzle, with all the show-stopping elements of a flock of doves flying out of a magician’s sleeve. It made me laugh, thrill, think, and wonder.” -
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Help by Kathryn Stockett. “Lush, original, and poignant, Kathryn Stockett has written a wondrous novel. You will be swept away as they work, play, and love during a time when possibilities for women were few but their dreams of the future were limitless. A glorious read.” –
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(boston.com, Feb. 6, Geoff Edgers)
It’s no surprise that T. Coraghessan Boyle admired the late John Updike. Like the “Rabbit” writer, Boyle is productive, with 11 novels and eight short story collections to his credit. His 12th novel, “The Women,” imagines Frank Lloyd Wright through four women in the late architect’s life. Boyle, 60, appears Feb. 11, at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store. He spoke from his home, which just happens to be the George C. Stewart House, the first private residence Wright built in California.
Q. What is a T.C. Boyle reading like?
A. Well, I am a ham. Absolutely. I love to perform before the audience. When we hear the word “reading,” we think of school and think about being bored. The reason I do it, and do it so much, is because I love to turn the audience on to a show – to remind them that literature is alive and fun and entertaining despite the fact you have to read it in your school class.
Q. Is it at all strange to write about Frank Lloyd Wright when you’ve lived in his house for 16 years?
A. That is one of the reasons I had always thought about writing about him. It took me a while to get around to it. I thought, it’s going to be so special to learn as much as I can about him and to more appreciate the house I’ve been (more…)
A dazzling novel of Frank Lloyd Wright, told from the point of view of the women in his life
Having brought to life eccentric cereal king John Harvey Kellogg in The Road to Wellville and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in The Inner Circle, T.C. Boyle now turns his fictional sights on an even more colorful and outlandish character: Frank Lloyd Wright.
Boyle’s account of Wright’s life, as told through the experiences of the four women who loved him, blazes with his trademark wit and invention. Wright’s life was one long howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, (more…)
(buffalonews.com, Jan. 18, Mark Schechner)
Literature loves monsters. Where would “Beowulf” be without Grendel? “Paradise Lost” without Satan? Shakespeare without Iago, Macbeth or Richard III? Where would the novels of Philip Roth or Saul Bellow be without the ex-wife, that once and future Lady Macbeth of modern fiction?
Well, put down your Roth and your Bellow for tales of the all-devouring ex-wife, because T. C. Boyle has just checked in with a novel to make all the other episodes of the ex-files sound like “Little Women.” Boyle’s latest novel, “The Women,” is about four women in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and all except the first are flaming creatures whose centrality to Wright’s life makes one wonder when he had time to design the Darwin (more…)
(Publisher’s Weekly, Nov. 17)
The Women by T.C. Boyle
The genius of Frank Lloyd Wright was both magnetic and cruel, as evidence by the succession of failed marriages and hot-blooded affairs depected in this biographic reimagining that drills into Wright mythology and the dark shadows of the American dream. The narrative moves backwards in time through the accounts of four women in Wright’s life: Olgivanna, the steely, grounded dancer from Montenegro; Miriam, the drug-addled narcissist from the South; Kitty, the devoted first wife; and Mamah, the beloved and murdered soul mate and intellectual companion. But the novel’s centerpiece is Taliesin, Wright’s Oz-like Wisconsin home. The tragedies that befall Taliesin- fires, brutality-serve as proxy for Wright’s inner turmoil; his deper stirrings surface only occasionally from behind Boyle’s oft-over-bearing depiction of Wright’s women. The most engating person is Tadashi Sato, the Japanese-American apprentice and narrator who emerges via his frequent footnotes as a comlex reflection of “Wrieto-san” and, with his inability to remain objective and his evolving view of Wright and Wright’s image, becomes the book’s most dynamic character. It’s a lush, dense and hyperliterate book – in words, vinage Boyle (February 2009)
Get your copy of T.C. Boyle’s The Women from www.vjbooks.com today!
