Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

Great book, humorous, sad, satirical and philosophical. Must read for parents of teenagers to understand what's going wrong in their relationship and why they disconnect with each other. Beautiful description of Paris (it feels like you are there again); marriage crisis; nostalgia; teenage substance abuse, moral values, devotion, and even religious themes; success vs failures, etc

I think this book explores a married woman's psychological response to not having kids.Her husband is coping through work. Berie, on the other hand, is hoping to make sense of her present by better understanding her past.In particular Berie recollects her intense adolescent friendship with Sils, the girl whom she helped have an abortion when they were both fifteen.Berie stole money to pay for the abortion, and when Berie's parents found out, they sent her away to boarding school in disgrace.The juxta-position of an abortion with later childlessness is a riskily simplistic proposition, even though it was not Berie herself who had the abortion. It is such a loaded subject both emotionally and politically, especially in America. But Moore presents the juxta-position as a crisis of identity for one woman, rather than as a political issue.Berie has a problem reconciling her teenage self, who facilitated an abortion out of deep love for her friend, with her present self, who hopes for a baby with her husband, even though they are not in love. Her desires and direction-of-travel then and now are so at odds.Put simply, how does any woman absorb the tension between the phase of life when pregnancy equals disaster and the phase of life when pregnancy is the goal? It is a U-turn... a threat to personal integrity. It can drive a wedge between our young and older selves.The story is woven through with tales of neglected or abandoned children: the fostered children who lived with Berie's parents, whose lives were not happy in spite of Berie's parents' good intentions; Berie's father, who was sent away by his parents for the summer aged 5 because he was a chatterbox and returned 'stone quiet'; Berie herself, who was sent away in disgrace to the "woodsy dumping ground for half-loved kids."The novel is an attempt to harmonise the voices of the central character, which are very different at different times of her life, into a coherent whole:"When I was a child I tried hard for a time to split my voice." (page 5)I didn't understand that when I read it.But then on the last page of the book, Berie recalls the Girls' Choir singing:"we formed a single living thing... No boys, no parents in the room."And then I understood - others' conflicting expectations can cause us to lose ourselves.In their adolescence, the girls had a connection with their inner selves and with each other, which they subsequently lost due to the confusing pressures of expectations - both their own and other people's.

Chacune des nouvelles vous serre le cœur et l'écriture est étincelante .Tendresse, détresses, humour léger, profondeur et singularité .Puis silence pendant 15 ans...Bark, son dernier roman en date vient de sortir, enfin

I have had this on my radar for ages, and I'm glad I finally got round to reading it.It's deceptively gentle, the sort of book that feels as though nothing much is happening when actually there's a depth of things, of life, pulling you in.Although I didn't find any of the characters particularly likeable (maybe that's part of the appeal) I was interested enough to see what happened to them.I don't know if I'll order anymore from the same author.

Das langweiligste Buch meines Lebens. Was soll das? Wen interessiert das? Ich lese viel und gerne, aber das Buch hat weder ein vernünftiges Ende noch einen Anfang.