The subject of growing up is universal. We all grow up (albeit some faster than others) and share many of the same adolescent experiences: the feeling that the laws aren't real and we are free to create our own rules, the indescribable desire for a developed chest and the hopeless, carefree existence full of naivety - a time when you weren't sure who you really were or what life had in store for you; a time when you made mistakes and began to learn more truths than you cared to.
I didn't know my parents well enough to be doing this to them, inflicting such an episode upon their lives. I realized that it was harder to endure the wrath of disappointment of people who've been kept from you, and form whom you've kept yourself, than it was to endure it from the people whom you knew best.
I enjoyed Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? so much because Moore does a fantastic job recreating these adolescent experiences in a way that brought me back to the days of my teenage angst and uncertainty. It's a novel that poignantly conveys nostalgia for the wild, carefree times of our youth. But it's more than just a coming of age story; it also examines the brevity of fast friendships and what it means to go back home.
Publisher: Vintage, 1994
