Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

The name of a painting in the book

Last week, my fiancé read my blog post (if you haven’t read it go check it out lol), and he told me the intro about I found out about the book reads like a Pinterest recipe intro.

Did I feel slightly judged in that moment? Unfortunately, yes. I am only a person.

But this week I’ve got nothing.

Let’s get into it!

Summary:

(🚨Spoiler alert🚨 it also feels important to the explanation)

Berie and Silsby (or as in the book Sils) are best friends. At 15 they are working their summer jobs at the local fairy-tale themed amusement park called Story-land, and spend every waking moment together. It’s almost the 70’s, and things seem both manic but also like they will never change in Berie’s world. The girls say silly things to each other. They spend time at each other’s houses smoking and laughing. Berie wishes she would grow up though. Life was strange but good. It was annoying in that teenage way. But it was good.

Sils is very pretty and seems to have all the boys wrapped around her finger in a way she doesn’t even notice. Berie noticed, and is slightly annoyed by the boys who hang around her just to get to Sils. One of these boys is Mike. Mike seems nice enough, but to Berie, she notices that Sils just looks tired. One day, Sils realizes that she is pregnant and doesn’t want to carry Mike’s baby to term. So Berie hatches a plan. Because she is a ticket attendant and handles cash, she would steal a little at a time and save enough to pay for the taxi there and back, as well as the abortion. Sils agrees to accept the favor grudgingly.

Time goes on and they try to forget about it. There is some distance between them that neither one of them understand. Berie doesn’t stop stealing though. This pays for their hangouts together, as well as expensive cab rides home. However, the consequences eventually catch up to her. Berie gets found out by her manager and fired in a very public display. She is grounded to her room by her very reserved and now extremely disappointed parents. They decide that for the rest of the summer, she is to go to a Cristian summer camp. After that, instead of returning to school in her hometown, she is to go to boarding school. Through this distance, Berie and Sils become distant and only kind of reconnect much much later in life. But even that doesn’t repair the loss that Berie feels even as an adult.

The nostalgia for a childhood place that never was

This book really impressed me. I love flowery language as much as the next person, but I couldn’t really see where the story was going until three quarters of the way through. The book weaved narrative and timelines really seamlessly, in a way that I think many writers think they are doing. (Quitter’s Paradise👀) It felt like reading a movie. Like for every feeling and train of thought, you were right there with the character. It wasn’t confusing ever. Every wandering end had a purpose. I really appreciate the eloquence in that.

This book hit me emotionally in a way that a good coming of age movie does. Like you watch the character grow up before your eyes. They were never perfect or articulate. They craved the relationships they were in. And then one day, it broke and disappeared. Then, years later, they try to go back and fix what is broken, only to find that it was never how they remembered it. Home will never be like the way you left it. The people you leave will never be the same as when you return to them. It’s the melancholic truth of living far away from people.

A lot of the time, I have to remind myself that while I was away doing my own thing, people were also doing theirs. I still can’t help myself logging into Facebook after months of not looking and finding 5 new married or engaged couples and 3 new babies in my feed. People from middle, high school, and college all living their lives just like I’m living mine. But it’s so hard to replace the person who I met in a science class, learned how to twerk with, or screamed lyrics in a dark club with, with a person that seems so adult all of a sudden. It’s all very strange growing up. I don’t think we talk about it enough. It feels so lost on me, and I can appreciate this book bubbling those thoughts to the surface.

I hope you are doing well and not thinking too much of how the past is not a place, but rather a feeling. I hope you all have a lovely rest of your week and I will talk to you again soon xoxo