As she's shown in previous collections such as Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman (The Wine Lover's Daughter) consistently produces essays that are simultaneously erudite and entertaining. The seven pieces in Frog, covering subjects that include a not-so-beloved pet amphibian, the use of pronouns, and a pair of historical excursions, are more of these highly polished gems.
The collection's titular essay relates the hilarious story of Bunky, an African clawed frog Fadiman's son raised from a tadpole and which lived for nearly 17 years in an uncomfortably small aquarium. Fadiman conveys the family's ambivalent relationship to the amphibian; and yet, after six years of keeping Bunky in a Ziploc bag in the freezer following his demise, with their children grown and moved away, Fadiman and her husband gave him a dignified burial beneath their backyard weeping cherry tree.
Fadiman has been teaching nonfiction writing at Yale since 2005. The essay "Screen Share" recounts her pivot to Zoom instruction at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, while "Yes to Everything" pays tribute to her student Marina Keegan, a brilliant writer who died at age 22 in a car accident. But Fadiman's at her best in "All My Pronouns," where she takes a description of her idiosyncratic method of eating M&Ms as an unlikely departure point.
Though these essays have appeared previously in publications like Harper's, Fadiman says she's made changes, some of them substantial, since their first publication. In its blend of personal and more academic pieces, it's hard to find fault with this collection, except that one wishes it contained even more of her consistently engaging writing. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer