| | 
|
|
 |
|
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
Lorrie Moore. Vintage: 2004 (paperback reprint). ISBN: 1400033829. 160 pages.
Guide not available
|
| |
|
During our life-changing meeting (for us, that is, not for her!) Oprah Winfrey told us that she's a big believer in first sentences, in opening paragraphs, as indicators of that truly special and rare book that will take over your heart and mind. Which, of course, made us feel incredibly justified in our own devotion to the prophetic power of first impressions! So check out this first paragraph from Lorrie Moore's achingly wondrous first novel: "In Paris, we eat brains every night. My husband likes the vaporous, fishy mousse of them. They are a kind of seafood, he thinks, locked tightly in the skull, like shelled creatures in the dark caves of the ocean, sprung suddenly free and killed by the light; they've grown clammy with shelter, fortressed vulnerability, dreamy nights. Me, I'm eating for a flashback."
If the main body of that elegant prose seems too high-falutin' for your taste, you can't overlook the tight practical jab of those first and last sentences. As near as we can get to explaining the sheer magic of Moore's writing, it has something and everything to do with the way she combines such lovely lyrical phrases with such glib, merciless humor - Kira Stevens discovered Moore's complicated gift for GBL when she chose Moore's short story collection The Birds of America for our very first ever Greedy Reader Menu in January of 2000. We know that we've overloaded you with some huge books in this new menu, so we're especially pleased to offer you this tiny perfect gem of 148 pages. And we know something else about all greedy readers out there, that is if you were once fifteen and had a best friend - that best friend who made you laugh like a maniac as you explored all the possible crimes and misdemeanors of youth. The heroine of The Frog Hospital is one such lucky soul, a grown woman who is looking back with bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth. The summer that Berie and Sils were fifteen, they got into some really terrible but also terribly funny trouble, and now Berie, like so many of us as adults, is missing that lost best friend who can't be replaced by any marital partner, no matter male or female, no matter how clever or devoted. Berie's story is milk-spurting-shockingly-from-your-nose funny, but also so undeniably tender and true that you're going to find yourself underlining quotes that capture something that's been lurking at the back of your wandering mind for as long as you've been a productive member of society.
|
| |
| |
contact us
