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"Touches and dazzles and entertains. An enchanting novel." --The New York Times In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America we share a grown woman's bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger--until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help--and then everything changes.… (more)
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? captures the melancholy and angst of growing up and having close adolescent relationships fail to survive that transition. There were poignant moment, but also a lot that was overly familiar and not as standout. ( )
I love Lorrie Moore and this novel was just perfect. The writing was lovely, the characters were well drawn, and it was a great story. But mostly I just loved the exquisite writing. ( )
Beautifully written, with vivid poetic imagery and a unique writing style that flows with ease into your mind and heart. While I consider myself to be generally uninterested in coming-of-age stories but in this case it was narrated by the mature protagonist which made it somehow bittersweet and interesting enough. Recently I found myself avoiding books that lack substance/plot, relying on social commentary, while heavy with literary descriptions. However, this book succeeded in completely turning that around. ( )
I love finding authors like this. The ones who make me feel devoted, like I would read anything they wrote. And it's funny, I've been looking at this book for years, thinking I should read it. I don't know why it took me so long to actually get around to it.
How public -- Like a Frog -- To tell one's name -- the livelong June -- To an admiring Bog! Emily Dickinson
I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Well run, Thisby. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Dedication
for MFB
First words
In Paris we eat brains every night.
Quotations
Joni Mitchell was keening Little Green on Sils's record player. Sils listened to that song all the time now, like some woeful soundtrack. The soprano slides and oos of the song always made us both sing along, when I was there. Little green, be a gypsy dancer. Twenty years later at a cocktail party, I would watch an entire roomful of women, one by one and in bunches, begin to sing this song when it came on over the sound system. They quit conversations, touched people's arms, turned toward the corner stereo and sang in a show of memory and surprise. All the women knew the words, every last one of them, and it shocked the men.
I wondered whether I would ever be in love with a boy. Would I? Why not? Why not? Right then and there I vowed and dared and bet that sky and the trees -- I swore on Estherina Foster's frave -- that I would. But it wouldn't be a boy like Mike. Nobody like that. It would be a boy very far away – and I would go there someday and find him. He would just be there. And I would love him. And he would love me. And we would simply be there together, loving like that, in that place, wherever it was. I had a whole life ahead.
I can’t give my heart away to anyone but you,” Daniel said to me in the hospital. “Not that I haven’t tried, of course. It’s just that when I do, the other organs start a letter-writing campaign.”
Last words
Though sometimes in my brain I go back to that afternoon, to relive it, sial up there again toward the acoustic panels, teh basketball hoops, and the old oak clock, the careful harmonies set loose from voices so pure and exact and light we wondered later, packing up to leave, how high and fast and far they had gone.
"Touches and dazzles and entertains. An enchanting novel." --The New York Times In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America we share a grown woman's bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger--until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help--and then everything changes.
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