Journal Entry 1 by crimson-tide from Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Thursday, May 12, 2011

From Booklist:
Famed for his fine translations of the Hebrew scriptures and the German poet Rilke, Mitchell has lately turned to a unique combination of fiction and commentary. His second work, after Meetings with the Archangel (1998), in this mode retells a familiar fairy tale to emphasize its parablistic qualities. In a small French kingdom near the end of the Renaissance, one of the dreaded and by then infrequent "Unusual Phenomena" --the bases of the stories of talking animals that pepper the period's literature--occurs. A princess drops a gold ball in a well, from which a male frog emerges to address her in perfect French. They strike a bargain: should the frog retrieve the ball, the princess will love and befriend him and allow him to eat from her plate, drink from her cup, and sleep in her bed--in effect, marry him. She agrees because she has already begun to love him and feels certain he is an enchanted prince. He retrieves the ball, and things develop toward the happy ending of the "Condensed Version," as Mitchell refers to the common, six-minute bedtime story redaction of what he expands into a psychological and philosophical novella. Replete with amusing metaphysical explanations, such as the solemn assertion that a "hairline crack . . . in reality" was responsible for Unusual Phenomena, and droll historical ones, such as saying that only the frog could recover the ball because no person in Europe knew how to dive at that time, this is thoroughly delightful entertainment as well as a serious examination of how love can and does transform frogs and princesses alike.