The Frog

Narrated by a French child, Pascal Gateau, whose mother calls him her ""little tadpole'' and who himself swallows a frog in the early years of the century, Hawkes's (Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade; Sweet William) latest novel is a rather awkwardly told picaresque fairy tale for adults. The frog, whom Pascal names Armand after a fairy-tale amphibian whose story his mother reads to him, takes up residence inside the child's body, becoming his lifelong companion. Pascal's parents work for a rich count, his father as a farmhand and his mother as a cook, until the outbreak of WW I, at which point both farmer and aristocrat go off to battle. Pascal's father returns minus a leg and, clinically depressed, is sent to a mental institution. Eventually, Pascal is consigned there too, and he discovers his abilities as a chef. After the madhouse, he takes a job at a brothel, where Armand begins to make regular appearances of a sexual nature from Pascal's mouth. Hawkes, who has shown himself in previous fictions to be a fantastic stylist of darkly surreal tales that can be as charming as they are disturbing, trips at nearly every step here: Pascal's narrative voice is affected and wearying; his brief tale skims only the surface of every major event and character that crosses its path. Despite the novel's air of allegory, it lacks the thematic depth to carry its conceit. It has its charming moments but, surprisingly, not the sustained wit and invention that usually lifts Hawkes's writing out of the realm of affectation. (June)