kind of a fictional memoir of a middle-aged woman as she reminisces to herself about her best friend at fifteen. the familiar tone enriches the story, and the recounting of returning to her hometown after a long absence rang especially true. though the frog theme stuck into my subconscious in a bizarre way.

Later she drove me around the village, to show me it again. The yards seemed emptier and larger than I remembered, the houses further apart and glum, though pretty … The roads were country roads, still wooded and full of longing and despair and that search for something, anything going on; they were roads of rumor—curvy, restless roads that seemed for moments to stretch forward but then just turned back in on themselves, like snakes snacking on their own tails.