who will run the frog hospital.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore
Vintage Contemporaries, 148 pages.

Synopsis from back of book (and the Vintage website):

"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."

 

I think what may be surprising about this book is that, after you finish reading it, it feels like there was more to it than should've logically fit in 148 pages. The narrator is Berie, the main character, about 25 years after the summer she worked at Storyland, during a stay in Paris while her husband attends a conference. The main story, that of fifteen-year-old Berie and Sils in their little town of Horsehearts, NY, is rich and dense. The Parisian interludes are almost stark, terribly mature, and informative: the "after photo" of Berie's coming of age.

The subtle (except for its use in the title, which makes it seem a little forced) metaphor of frogs works beautifully: "My breasts had become larger--they were large!--and I was still referring to them as mosquito bites. For a semester, an embarassing, amphibious semester when I didn't know who I was, what I looked like, what jokes to tell, moving from water to land, I tried to stop telling any jokes at all" (127). The word "amphibious" in various places throughout the book, coupled with several direct references to frogs (17, 69, 94), suggest the in-betweenness of being 15.

The characters live; they seem to actually exist. Sils is both a skillfully-written, three-dimensional supporting character, and an elusive, mystery of a girl. This combination strengthens the idea that Berie somewhat idolizes Sils, but still feels like she barely knows her. Lovely character development.

And yet, I still felt like something was missing. Perhaps Berie is too much of a voyeur toward the end. She divulges less and less about herself, which has the possibility of making the book stronger--the reader learns about Berie by interpreting her thoughts about others. Unfortunately, I don't think that's achieved. Instead, she sums herself up in italics, without examples or illustrations, and the window of interpretation is subsequently closed.

It's an excellent book though. Reading it felt like a self-indulgent treat, like a manicure or crossing out all the photos in your high school yearbook of all the people you didn't like, only you somehow feel a little smarter, a little more complete, afterward.