SOURCE: Miner, Valerie. “Connections and Disconnections.” Women's Review of Books 12, no. 7 (April 1995): 14-15.

In the following excerpt, Miner provides a mixed review of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, praising Moore's prose style but finding flaws in the story's extenuated form as novel rather than a novella.

Longing permeates so much American fiction these days. Longing for an idealized past, longing for hope that will get you through the day, longing for real connection with family, culture, nation, in a society that compels us to respond immediately, keep our eyes on the inside lane and go for it. What Rebecca Brown and Lorrie Moore bring to this frenzied moment is a talent for paying attention.

These two veteran storytellers are writing first-person, female accounts about the nature of caring. In [Rebecca Brown's]The Gifts of the Body, which attends eloquently to physical action, the narrator takes care of...