Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? - Lorrie Moore

A quick note to say that if you would like to help me with the running costs of the book group, you can give a small contribution via Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/annabookgroup

Thank you to everyone who helped me with the Meetup fees in 2025!

We will meet from 6:30 onwards at the pub and go to the room upstairs between 6:30 and 7:00. Please check with the bar staff before going up that the room is ready and please don't go up before our start time. We will start the discussion at around 7:00pm and talk about the book for an hour or so before having a break. Then we can vote on next month's book.

If you have any suggestions for short (or shortish) books for the next shortlist, please message me ahead of time.

Thanks!

------------

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? - Lorrie Moore (1994, 147 pages)

In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth.

The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.

-------------------

Shortlist for March

The Time Machine - HG Wells (1895, 118 pages)

“I’ve had a most amazing time....”

So begins the Time Traveller’s astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era—and the story that launched H.G. Wells’s successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes...and our darkest fears. A pull of the Time Machine’s lever propels him to the age of a slowly dying Earth. There he discovers two bizarre races—the ethereal Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—who not only symbolize the duality of human nature, but offer a terrifying portrait of the men of tomorrow as well. Published in 1895, this masterpiece of invention captivated readers on the threshold of a new century. Thanks to Wells’s expert storytelling and provocative insight, The Time Machine will continue to enthrall readers for generations to come.

The Italian Girl - Irish Murdoch (1964, 171 pages)

The funeral of Edward’s mother brings him home for the first time in years. Though his return rekindles his affection for his childhood home, it also triggers a resurgence of the family tensions that caused him to leave in the first place. As Edward becomes tangled in his family’s web of corrosive secrets, his homecoming tips a precariously balanced dynamic into sudden chaos.

The Italian Girl is Murdoch’s compelling story of a man’s reunion with his estranged family, and of the tragedy that shocks them all into confronting their dark past.

Great Granny Webster - Caroline Blackwood (1977, 108 pages)

Great Granny Webster is Caroline Blackwood's masterpiece. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling raconteur long before she made her name as a strikingly original writer. This macabre, mordantly funny, partly autobiographical novel reveals the gothic craziness behind the scenes in the great houses of the aristocracy, as witnessed through the unsparing eyes of an orphaned teenage girl. Great Granny Webster herself is a fabulous monster, the chilliest of matriarchs, presiding with steely self-regard over a landscape of ruined lives.