Hardcover. Sent to me by a friend to read. Thanks, Jp!

This is a second copy. My original review from March 2009:

Reading this book was very, very strange.

I used to date, and in fact was once engaged to, an architect who was quite a bit like Frank Lloyd Wright, both in mannerisms and personality. He lived in Chicago and worked for various firms in and around the area. I used to work in different shops, including the ArchiCenter, which is the Chicago Architecture Foundation store. Our relationship was very much like that of Frank and Mamah's. It was a raging, desperate, tortuous sort of thing. While I loved the man, I hated the relationship. And I struggled a lot to find my place in it, because I was not treated as an equal.

A passage in the book mentions Mamah walking into her study at Taliesin one day, only to discover FLW had removed a tin of flowers she had set on her windowsill because the sort of flowers affronted his vision. He put it on the floor. She felt stung. I can't even tell you the number of comments and little actions like that I went through. I could so well relate it is laughable.

Like FLW, my former would completely immerse in his work, his passions, his disuse for anyone and anything that didn't stroke his ego or his personal convictions. Sometimes this would include me. Naturally, our relationship didn't work out because I, like Mamah, insisted on something for myself and refused to bow to what his idea of me ought to be. The author mentions Ibsen and "A Doll's House" in the Readers' Guide. Yes! That's it, exactly.

The weight of the novel felt familiar and suffocating. My former even went so far as to volunteer at Robie House in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. As I read the novel, I lived and breathed all of that all over again. I felt myself touching the woodwork in the house and the concrete beneath my feet, the streets of Chicago, the ghosts of FLW and his work all around me, where it has been for years and which I can't seem to shake, even now.

There are two ghosts for me when I visit the city of Chicago: the architecture and the architects.

Naturally, I had no idea this book would show me all of these things. Maybe I wouldn't have wanted to read it. And even though it was painful to read for all its' familiarity, I couldn't set it down. But I hope I can leave it behind me.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

[Box: All Mixed Up]

selected from trekwoman's "all mixed up" bookbox. i'm looking forward to reading it!

eta: i've picked this up several times fully intending to lose myself in it, and for whatever reason have been too distracted to do so. i'm passing it on to a friend now, and hoping it comes my way again at some point in the future.

Releasing at BC meeting tonight @ the Starbucks on Lake Boone Road.

Picked this up at the monthly BookCrossing meetup at Starbucks, Lake Boone Trail in Raleigh. It was my first time to attend a BC meetup, and I enjoyed chatting with the two others who showed up on a rainy Tuesday evening!

This will be on the bookshelves. Enjoy!