As she's shown in her collections Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader and At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays, 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 contrasts the family's ambivalent relationship to the amphibian with their greater affinity for "smart, warm-blooded, furry" pets like their "starter mammal" hamster Silkie and guinea pigs Biscuit and Bean. 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. "You... you... you did everything a frog should do," were Fadiman's husband's halting closing words as he consigned Bunky to his eternal home.
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. Fadiman, who identifies herself as a prescriptivist--a strict adherent to established the rules of grammar--leads the reader on a charmingly circuitous journey through the forest of issues surrounding the use of the pronoun "they." At its heart, the piece smartly contrasts her relatively easy adoption of the pronoun as a signifier of gender identity with the far more vexing (to her) practice of using it as a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun.
Some of Fadiman's essays seem utterly casual even as they reflect assiduous research. "South Polar Times" describes Fadiman's fascination with a magazine edited by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton and published by and for the participants in Robert Falcon Scott's expeditions to the South Pole in the early 20th century.
Though these essays have appeared previously in publications like Harper's and Wired, 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
Shelf Talker: Anne Fadiman's gracefully written third essay collection displays her characteristic blend of erudition and entertainment.