Mobility, adaptability and colorful changes are confronted by the girls and women in Lara Tupper's nimble interlinked collection, aptly titled Amphibians. Although each memorable story easily stands alone, to seek and recognize the deft connections intensifies the reading experience. Unnamed narrators bookend the collection, requiring careful attention to parse how "Amphibians" and "Good Neighbors," respectively, dovetail with other stories. "Amphibians," the collection's longest and strongest, introduces "the girl," who, despite decades of maturation, remains "the girl" to the four most significant adults in her life--her parents, her mother's best friend and husband. Her identity reveal comes in "Spoils."
Traveling women appear in multiple stories, as if being elsewhere might mean the chance to be someone else. In "Dishdash," college student Mo visits her expat bartender brother, Mickey, in Dubai, hoping to escape a breakup, only to realize she's been the customer-attracting bait. Dubai is again the setting in "Belly Dancing," where Allie's six-month cocktail pianist gig makes her recall the teenage affair she had with her piano teacher. Allie's BFF Sam watches her mother leave her cheating father in "Glass"; the adult Sam, working as a dancer on an international cruise ship, cheats on her married lover in "Ting," then is cheated on in "Fishing." Finally, in "Good Neighbors," a nameless woman in a stifling relationship heads for the cleansing water.
Tupper's 11 stories took 20 years of writing, and won the 2019 Leapfrog Fiction contest. As they bounce across countries and continents, these girls and women try on, sometimes adapt, often discard then reinvent identities in their search for understanding and fulfilment. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon