Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Moore's musical prose and looping, winding story capture and memorialize the ephemera of youth and its formative yet somehow mostly impermanent friendships.

Some choice lines put it nicely:

"I cried for everyone and for all the scrabbly, funny love one sent out into the world like some hit song that enters space and bounds off to another galaxy, a tune so pretty you think the words are true, you do!"

"It seemed even then a valedictory chorus to our childhood and stuck us deep in the brain and low in the spine, like a call, and in its wave and swell lifted us, I swear, to the ceiling in astonishment and bliss, we sounded that beautiful."

I finally gave in...

And I gave it three stars because I am ultimately really undecided on my feelings. While it was definitely compelling, I really didn't understand why it was the "it" book. Smarter than Da Vinci Code in some respects, it was truly too graphic and terrifying for my taste in others. Many times I caught myself thinking, so THIS is what everyone is reading on the Subway?!

I did think the swift and terse writing was very well done. Even though this is a translation, I felt the style matched the starkness of the setting and the emotional stoicism/frigidity of many of the characters. Bleak, but beautiful in some ways.

Jury is out on when I will start the next book. I think I will definitely read it, but not yet. I need a breather, but I find myself reading a book for book club in which the man starts to loose his toes to frostbite (The Unnamed... reminds me all too much of a male-friendly version of The Time Traveler's Wife!)


I know this a cliche book to make my return on. I'm fine with it as long as you are! I'm not going to review The Unnamed because I really did not like it and that is all that needs to be said (see my other feelings above.) 


Next up: Moose, by Stephanie Klein, author of Straight Up and Dirty (one of my favorite memoirs) and the blog Greek Tragedy. 

I Heart Jen Lancaster

Swamped!

I've neglected the blog again! Forgive me, the reading for school is literally piling up... this is what I get for taking 5 classes second semester senior year. It's ok, I"m enjoying them, but this blog needs to go on hiatus until a later date (spring break... or after graduation...eee!)

In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter! Thanks for your patience!

picture via pinklemonade blog