The Women

A Novel

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Frank Lloyd Wright's life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, or romantic. He never did what was expected, and he never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions.

Told through the experiences of the four women who loved him, this imaginative account of Wright's raucous life blazes with Boyle's trademark wit and invention. Boyle's protean voice captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a masterful ode to the creative life in all its complexity and grandeur.

©2009 T. Coraghessan Boyle (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"America's most imaginative contemporary novelist." ( Newsweek)

"One of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation." ( New York Times)

“The author is a master storyteller who takes literary license but never loses sight of his subject's humanity. Narrator Grover Gardner has a deep nasal tone that, remarkably, sounds like an old radio broadcaster's voice. This fits the mood of the book perfectly since the story takes place in the 1930s.” ( AudioFile)

Novel of Frank Lloyd Wright

What did you love best about The Women?

The introduction to Frank Lloyd's Wrights work and life

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Women?

TCBoyle use of sato to narrate the story

Interesting read

The narrator was very enjoyable. I like that the story line didn't go from last to first and there were some interesting facts along the way.

Interesting but too long

Frank Lloyd’s story is great, his women quit le sophisticated, but the book could have been half the length and still been great

Too long

It is well written and narrated but should be cut down by a third and most of the women characters were so negative that it became a chore to listen to sometimes

The Best of Boyle

So in a book about an architect (or rather around said architect's muses), I spent more time pondering the architure of the book itself than I might typically -- not because of the profession of the man, but because the structure of the book is questionable, and only after completing it did I realized why Boyle made the choices he did.Yet to have a reader wondering midstream why the author is choosing a weird chronology is akin to wondering why an Architect walks you into a bedroom before the kitchen.

2 quick things - I've never been a huge Boyle fan, I think because I've always felt a bit of authorial disdain when it comes to his character treatment, and less focus on characters than on other elements of his novels. In this novel I appreciated Boyle's care of and for all of his subjects, and the depth in which they are rendered is appreciated.

I'm of a generation that knows who Frank Lloyd Wright is, knows his clean/modern lines but little else about his chaotic life. This isn't the book to educate a reader about his work, but it's a book with enough narrative pull that it creates the desire in someone like me to know more about the work that the character in the novel created, which I also think is a huge compliment to the author.

Because I had no knowledge of Wright's personal life, I was not able to guess in advance why Boyle started with the fourth woman, moved to the third, interjected the first occasionally and closed the book with the fourth until the dramatic, murder-capped denouement. Of course Woman #2's Demise was too dramatic to insert into the middle of the book! But the very fact that I wondered, to me indicates Boyle wasn't quite successful in "arting" around the reordering of the women and the life. Valiant effort though- inserting a distinct narrator (Japanese architecture student) for much of the book helped deflect musings about chronology, but not defeat them.

The Dysfinctional Life of F L Wright and his Women

What made the experience of listening to The Women the most enjoyable?

Even though I felt like Frank Lloyd Wright was an opportunist and his outright abuse of the women and people in his life, the story was compelling enough to keep listening to the book.

Would you be willing to try another book from T. C. Boyle? Why or why not?

Yes, I would. He is so descriptive in his story line and he drew you into the story.

What does Grover Gardner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I think he made the book much easier to follow than if I had been reading it. I can see where reading the book would have been much more difficult to follow. Mr Gardner was an extraordinary narrator in his performance. I would definitely want to listen to other books narrated by him.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

When he was in China and his paramour for the moment left him and traveled into the mountains to get away from Frank. Then the letter writing back and forth between the two and then Mr. Wright showing up on her doorstep, and the two spending some time together alone before they went back to Hong Kong. He had an uncanny way of always getting his way.

Any additional comments?

Anyone interested in this book, I would recommend they listen to it rather than read it.

Too Long

Too long, too repetitive to wait for the OUTSTANDINGLY climatic ending.

Great performance, draggy story

Too much detail, but interesting. Should have been in the correct timeline order. Didn’t like it being out of order.

Not just one, but three women behind the man...

Frank Lloyd Wright is well known for setting new standards in architectural design. This book tells of how he pushed the envelope on social and even moral issues of his time - mistresses, divorces, equality of the sexes and races... The narrative is told by one of his apprentices in a very unique third party tale whose chronology jumps back and forth.

Meh.

Interesting, but woefully depressing. You wear the characters' feelings like a wet blanket around your shoulders for the duration. The story is very interestingly woven together.

I didn't much care for the reader's voice - perhaps it was the quality of the recording.