Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
By Lorrie Moore (147 pages)
Published by Vintage
Bookish rating: 4
As Berie travels in Paris with her not-spectacular husband, she remembers, through a series of flashbacks, a youthful summer in 1972 and her relationship with her ballsy BFF, Sils.
Moore brilliantly captures the neurosis and optimistic anything-can-happen! nature of adolescence, along with the adult realization that life really isn't as sparkly or exciting as you had thought when 15 years old. Moore is witty and unbelievably clever with words--but in a way that benefits the text rather than showing off her ability twist words.
Although I understood Moore contrasting Berie's hum-drum stagnant marriage in what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful, exciting cities in the world--Paris--with her surprisingly MORE exciting existence in a small Adirondack tourist town, I couldn't quite figure out what the instigating reason was for Berie suddenly having all these 1972 flashbacks.
This was my second Lorrie Moore novel (having already read A Gate at the Stairs), and I love the originality and wry wit-plus-depth of Moore's writing style.
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