The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults

Rating:
Summary: The power of transformation, explained
Review: This book can be transformative, all by itself. It is elegant, pithy, humorous, and most of all, thought-provoking. Through parable metaphor, it explains the mechanics of compassion (as a mode of love) vs. pity (a mode of contempt). It drives home the fact that most women marry princes that turn into frogs, but in some cases, there are frogs that become princes through transformation. Beautiful and inspirational, the book itself can instil that process, and it's an easy and delightful read, besides.

Rating:
Summary: The power of transformation, explained
Review: This book can be transformative, all by itself. It is elegant, pithy, humorous, and most of all, thought-provoking. Through parable metaphor, it explains the mechanics of compassion (as a mode of love) vs. pity (a mode of contempt). It drives home the fact that most women marry princes that turn into frogs, but in some cases, there are frogs that become princes through transformation. Beautiful and inspirational, the book itself can instil that process, and it's an easy and delightful read, besides.

Rating:
Summary: Can the truth be found in a Frog?
Review: This fabulous book captures the mind to think in a more complex manner. The beauty of it's wording is captured through the simplicaty and elementray level of thought of a fairy tale. The concept is somewhat childish but the effect leaves you seeing yourself at the dinner table with a frog -- or a very ugly man -- that you do not wish your parents to know of his existence. All in all, I give this play a score of three stars for it's ability to allow you to catch a new prespective on life.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: To my mind this is one of Stephen Mitchell's best works. It's an excellent example of the sort of thing he does best: he "listens" his way into a traditional text or story, and then says what it "wants" to say in lucid, liquid English prose-poetry.

In this case his story is the traditional "Condensed Version" of the story of the princess and the frog prince. Mitchell has remarked somewhere that the characters in this old Grimm's fairy tale were crying out to be deepened -- and so his retelling of the story deepens them into, respectively, a self-possessed Tao-Te-Ching-quoting princess and a meditative but seriously lovestruck frog.

The tale itself is transformed into a parable of love and spiritual transformation -- or were Mitchell's insights already present in the original tale just waiting for someone to bring them out? (Does it even make sense to suggest that these meanings were "in" the story _rather than_ "in" Mitchell's elaboration of it?)

Be that as it may, Mitchell's interpretive rendering is as lovely and captivating as anything he's ever written. I won't spoil anything, but Mitchell reminds the reader very early on about a point we often forget about the original tale: the frog doesn't turn into a prince when the princess kisses him, but only when she hurls him into a wall.

(The lesson here is not, of course, that if you don't like your lover as he is, you should throw him really hard against a load-bearing structural member and hope he changes into something you like better! It's that real love requires an unwillingness to settle for less than each other's best, together with a complemetary willingness to undergo difficult-but-necessary transformations oneself. But you'd probably figured that out already.)

The tale is notable as much for its style as for its substance (if these two aspects of Mitchell's work can be clearly differentiated at all). The narrative is filled with little frame-breaking devices, excursions into spiritual insight (and sometimes into just plain fun), and small touches that add texture to the physical and "historical" background of the story. As the events in question take place in Renaissance-period France, Mitchell works in not only some fine detail about e.g. the exquisite trappings of the royal palace but also some gentle twitting of French culture.

The insights themselves are, as is usual with Mitchell, the narrative center of gravity. I won't spoil these either, but they come from sources as diverse (or are they?) as the _Tao Te Ching_ and Spinoza, Japanese haiku and Rainer Maria Rilke. The sources will be no surprise to any readers familiar with the rest of Mitchell's ever-growing oeuvre, but they're worked into the story remarkably well.

Oh, and if you like this, see whether you can find a used copy of Mitchell's 1990 book _Parabales and Portraits_. It's currently out of print, but it's excellent in general and in particular it contains a one-page prose poem entitled "The Frog Prince" with which the present work is thematically unified.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: To my mind this is one of Stephen Mitchell's best works. It's an excellent example of the sort of thing he does best: he "listens" his way into a traditional text or story, and then says what it "wants" to say in lucid, liquid English prose-poetry.

In this case his story is the traditional "Condensed Version" of the story of the princess and the frog prince. Mitchell has remarked somewhere that the characters in this old Grimm's fairy tale were crying out to be deepened -- and so his retelling of the story deepens them into, respectively, a self-possessed Tao-Te-Ching-quoting princess and a meditative but seriously lovestruck frog.

The tale itself is transformed into a parable of love and spiritual transformation -- or were Mitchell's insights already present in the original tale just waiting for someone to bring them out? (Does it even make sense to suggest that these meanings were "in" the story _rather than_ "in" Mitchell's elaboration of it?)

Be that as it may, Mitchell's interpretive rendering is as lovely and captivating as anything he's ever written. I won't spoil anything, but Mitchell reminds the reader very early on about a point we often forget about the original tale: the frog doesn't turn into a prince when the princess kisses him, but only when she hurls him into a wall.

(The lesson here is not, of course, that if you don't like your lover as he is, you should throw him really hard against a load-bearing structural member and hope he changes into something you like better! It's that real love requires an unwillingness to settle for less than each other's best, together with a complemetary willingness to undergo difficult-but-necessary transformations oneself. But you'd probably figured that out already.)

The tale is notable as much for its style as for its substance (if these two aspects of Mitchell's work can be clearly differentiated at all). The narrative is filled with little frame-breaking devices, excursions into spiritual insight (and sometimes into just plain fun), and small touches that add texture to the physical and "historical" background of the story. As the events in question take place in Renaissance-period France, Mitchell works in not only some fine detail about e.g. the exquisite trappings of the royal palace but also some gentle twitting of French culture.

The insights themselves are, as is usual with Mitchell, the narrative center of gravity. I won't spoil these either, but they come from sources as diverse (or are they?) as the _Tao Te Ching_ and Spinoza, Japanese haiku and Rainer Maria Rilke. The sources will be no surprise to any readers familiar with the rest of Mitchell's ever-growing oeuvre, but they're worked into the story remarkably well.

Oh, and if you like this, see whether you can find a used copy of Mitchell's 1990 book _Parabales and Portraits_. It's currently out of print, but it's excellent in general and in particular it contains a one-page prose poem entitled "The Frog Prince" with which the present work is thematically unified.

Rating:
Summary: A Grimm retelling for the 21st Century
Review: While staying respectfully close to the traditional story outlines, Mitchell has embroidered within that tale a marvelous meditation on difference, desire, trust, and transformation. The section on what it means to "promise" alone is worth the price of the book. By changing perspectives, the author allows us to examine the many facets of the Frog Prince in a way that satisfies our modern interest in multi-perspective tellings while calling us back to our most profound needs and desires. A beautiful achievement.