The Frog

by John Hawkes

Asleep by a lily pond just before World War I, a young French child swallows a frog that not only survives within him but becomes a companion for life, sharing his physical and psychological pain but also giving him a strange sort of power over others

Genres: Fiction, Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

John Hawkes, born John Clendennin Talbot Burne Hawkes, Jr., was a postmodern American novelist, known for the intensity of his work, which suspended the traditional constraints of the narrative.

Born in Stamford, Connecticut, and educated at Harvard University, Hawkes taught at Brown University for thirty years. Although he published his first novel, The Cannibal, in 1949, it was The Lime Twig (1961) that first won him acclaim. Later, however, his second novel, The Beetle Leg, an intensely surrealistic western set in a Montana landscape that T. S. Eliot might have conjured, came to be viewed by many critics as one of the landmark novels of 20th Century American literature.

Hawkes died in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Lemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

It came to me, I remember, that not every child is made to suffer the way I had just suffered, and would again and again my life long, and that it is not every small boy who bears inside him the secret that was now mine.
This was the most fun I've had reading a book all year; Hawkes's glistening prose and gentle delivery make it easy to miss just how much of the human experience he conveys, the pleasure and the pain. Always exciting and unpredictable, you don't have to feel a kinship with amphibians to fall in love with The Frog, but it doesn't hurt.

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 4 out of 5]

чудернацька історія про хлопчика Паскаля, який думає, що проковтнув жабеня із казки, яке думає, що воно тепер керує хлопчиком. добра стилізація під французькі еротичні історії й намагання показати недоумкуватість як інваріант "ненадійного оповідача". безфабульно, але читабельно.

[Benji P · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

Totally ridiculous and equally funny. Worth a read if only for John Hawkes peculiar style of writing, I might even read it again

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pascal, a beloved toddler nicknamed the 'Tadpole', is himself entranced by both stories of a frog named Armand and by a real life version who squats on a lily pad in the shady pond of a country estate.

Pascal loves the frog pond, it 'was cool, it was warm, it was a place of midnight in the warmest part of the day', a place to stir young senses and the imagination.

Then one fateful day Pascal imagines that he has swallowed the frog, also called Armand, which then resides within his stomach and becomes a part of him which 'caused me such pain yet was also the miraculous extension of my pride and power'.

What follows is either an offbeat fable or the memoir of a madman, a tale which seems to come from a 'childish time out of time', a bizarre Oedipusian story of awakening sexual jealousy.

Like a Nabokovian narrator, Pascal glories in his uniqueness, rails against the 'stranglehold of convention' in others, addresses the reader with rhetorical entreaties, is precise in his recollections one minute, lax the next; a deluded man, yet committed in his delusions.

This delicious sentence, when Pascal discovers that the Dr. who treats him, and for whom he has been cooking meals, has actually been mocking his supposed affliction, is right out of a Nabokov novel:

'And to think that that evening, still swollen with surprise and pride, I treated him to a pheasant pie with truffles!'

An enjoyable oddity.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting account of Pascal, from earliest childhood through some indeterminate period of life, and his frog, Armand, with whom he has something of peculiar relationship. Often humorous, often grotesque, solidly pleasing and yet generally elusive despite the level of detail taken to describe many events.

[PaddytheMick · Rating 3 out of 5]

curious and charming and weird.

structured more like a novel than his others; also more magically bizarre. the memoirist viewpoint lends the strange happenings an elegant vibe - one blurb even invokes Proust.

Hawke’s unusual, discrete scenes of explosive prose are not to be found here; perhaps his style had seemingly evolved at this point.

[PeePee L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very on the fence about this book, the meaning behind the story and the way the author writes it is honestly very intriguing. There are so many ways you could read and understand this book. However it became quite confusing at moments, jumping into new ideas as a previous one just started. It kept me reading though and the vocabulary and metaphorical usage was great, just confusing.

[Simon Bate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pascal as a child swallows a frog, Armand , and later gets sent to an asylum and a brothel where the frog helps Pascal pleasure the ladies of the establishment and later still returns to the asylum where other inmates also have frogs, and then he dies.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, weird...intriguing...interesting. A review by Kate says it best.

[Carly · Rating 3 out of 5]

inexplicably erotic novel about a french boy who either did or did not swallow a frog

[William Robertson]

it was okay

[Hanne G · Rating 4 out of 5]

huh

[Gregory Blecha · Rating 5 out of 5]

ohn Hawkes' "The Frog" is a sensual, indulgent tale about a boy named Pascal who swallows a frog while sleeping beside a pond. The frog's presence induces severe stomach pains, but when Pascal's mother tries to remedy her son's suffering with curatives from the local pharmacist, Pascal determines that he must protect the frog buried in his belly, and thus prevent his mother from seeing what an oddity he has become. From that point, Pascal's psyche becomes fused with Armand, the frog that lives inside him.

Throughout his insular life, Armand chooses when he will emerge from Pascal's throat - once, for example, when wooed by a young girl who is more enchanted by Armand the frog than by Pascal the boy. While Pascal freely operates as an agent of his own passions and desires, other times he is nothing more than the motor while Armand steers him, a host overtaken by its parasite.

Pascal seldom leaves the cloistered walls of his various homes - the pastoral grounds of the Domaine Ardente, Saint-Mamès, an asylum for the afflicted, and the brothel of Madame Fromage where Pascal serves as a sort of concierge. His life is paranthetical, almost a footnote. At the end the reader is left to wonder how to weave and assimilate Pascal's enigmatic fable into his own. Perhaps there is a larger meaning to this story, or perhaps it is simply a guilty pleasure, a richly-worded, evocative and pleasurable narrative to fill a rainy afternoon...

[Aisha H 240511 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Done. A child who always sleep near the lack that full of frogs. Moreover, in one day when he was sleeping a frog came to his mouth then he move to his stomach. After that, this accident made the boy behavior like frogs and his mother was always said to him that he looks like a frog.

[Julaine]

Gift from Mel Dec 1999.

[Richie de Almeida]

Once in a while, you come across a novel that is incapable of demonstrating features like plot, dialog or engagement. "The Frog", is one of those novels.

[Amber Marble · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably one of the weirdest books I have ever read. I enjoyed it though. Has to start slow to pick up what Hawkes was trying to say but once I got used to his writing style, it was easy to read.

[Roderick Mcgillis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not sure I can finish this one. I find it ponderous and rather opaque. The characters are distanced and do not engage me. The story, such as it is, plods along in a somewhat hopping manner. The prose is Jamesian without the master's grace or delicacy. What can I say? The conceit of the frog Armand has possibilities, but for me these possibilities do not come out of the tadpole stage. I want to like this book, but wanting and achieving do not connect here. The frog needs a kiss, but finds no one willing, at least not me.