The tale of a French who boy gets a frog in his stomach before WW I, then carries it there through a lifetime that may or may not be allegorical but that the reader isn't entirely unhappy to have end. Pascal GÉteau has a happy childhood on a French estate where his mother is cook to a young count and countess, his father chief farmer. The sensitive but oddly-shaped boy—he's short, thick, squat—grows enamored of a frog-pond, waiting long hours to see a favorite amphibian appear on a particular lily pad. When the frog one day fails to show, Pascal charges into the stagnant pond—and comes out with the creature, somehow, in his stomach. And thereby hangs—well, at least a string of apparently significant events. Pascal's stomach cramps result in the delightful experience of being administered an enema by his young, pretty, adorable mother, though his father becomes increasingly jealous of the attentions paid by mother to son. For all, to be sure, is not pleasure. Something causes the boy to become a waking somnambulist, and after he offends the young countess by appearing in her boudoir (WW I comes and goes at about this time, taking with it a leg of Pascal's father), he is sent off to the Saint-Mamäs asylum, declared mad for believing a frog to be in his stomach. The reader will see ``proofs'' that the frog is really there, and will follow Pascal's adventures as lover of the asylum directors remarkable wife, then as switchboard operator (and afterward much more) in a brothel—until an incident with a foreigner, a prostitute, Pascal, and Pascal's frog (named Armand, by the way) results in a return to the asylum, a last discovery, and tale's end. A ``history'' of French culture—maybe; if it's likely to be most appealing to those with a taste for the luxuriantly decadent, it's served, in any case, under Hawkes's (Sweet William, 1993, etc.) usual flawless, rich, smooth sauce of words.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86577-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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