Faye, a mysterious and dark-haired
woman who is part of the decision making process of the Children’s Museum in Seattle,
thinks Lorrie Moore is "fantastic" and says that at one point the reader will be
struck by her cynicism and then – turn the page – will be moved by the pathos of
what she writes. Wendy Wasserstein
said that her writing is "Witty, sharp, moving." John Casey of the Chicago Tribune said,
"She’s a dazzler."
This story is told by an American photography curator who is living in Paris with
her less cosmopolitan husband; it tells of her youthful friendship with a "bad
girl." From Chapter One of Who Will Run the Frog
Hospital?
Certainly "safe" is what I am now—or am supposed to be. Safety is
in me, holds me straight, like a spine. My blood travels no new routes, simply knows its
way, lingers, grows drowsy and fond. Though there are times, even recently, in the small
city where we live, when I’ve left my husband for a late walk, the moon out hanging
upside down like some fantastical mistake—what life of offices and dull tasks could
have a moon in it flooding the sky and streets, without its seeming preposterous—and
in my walks, toward the silent corners, the cold mulchy smells, the treetops suddenly
waving in a wind, I’ve felt an old wildness again. Revenant and drunken. It
isn’t sexual, not really. It has more to do with adventure and escape, like a
twisting in me like a bolt, some shadow fastened at the feet and gunning for the rest,
though, finally, it has always stayed to one side as if it were some other impossible life
and knew it, like a good dog, good dog, good dog. It has always stayed. |
