The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults [Hardcover]

Stephen Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1999

In this brilliant jewel of a book, the best-selling author of Tao Te Ching: A New English Version expands and deepens the classic fairy tale in the most surprising and delightful ways, giving new emphasis to its message of the transcendent power of love.

The Frog Prince tells the story of a meditative frog's love for a rebellious princess, how she came to love him in spite of herself, and how her refusal to compromise helped him become who he truly was. This is a magical book that moves (amphibiously) from story to meditation and back, from the outrageous to the philosophical to the silly to the sublime. Profound, touching, written in prose as lively and unpredictable as a dream, The Frog Prince tickles the mind, opens the heart, and holds up a mirror to the soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The prolific author of popular adaptations of world classics (Tao Te Ching), translator (Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet) and commentator on religious texts (The Gospel According to Jesus), Mitchell here puts his talents to a slighter test with a modern retelling of the fairy tale "The Frog Prince." The story is familiar: a princess drops her golden ball down a well, a besotted frog rescues it and, in return, the princess promises to love the frog and let him eat from her plate, drink from her cup and sleep in her bed. Though the princess comes to regret her promise, the frog persists, and after a series of trials, he turns into a handsome prince. Mitchell's adaptation drapes this skeleton tale (which he calls the "Condensed Version") in philosophical asides and spiritual insights. Setting the story in an alternate 16th century plagued with Unusual Phenomena ("Magic was afoot everywhere. Things were getting out of hand"), in a castle on the river Loire, the author conjures up some inspired fantastic scenarios, particularly when he writes about magic as if it were historical reality. But his frequent digressions sometimes seem intended to stretch the narrative ("What makes a woman fall in love with a frog? Many women, since time immemorial, staring up at the bedroom ceiling in the dead middle of the night, have asked themselves the same question"), and references to the Tao Te Ching and the tenets of Eastern religions are incongruous. Insubstantial though it may be, however, the tale is gracefully told, and sympathetic readers will find it an appealing tribute to the original. 5-city author tour. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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. Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1st edition (October 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609605453
• ISBN-13: 978-0609605455
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #409,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Mitchell was born in Brooklyn in 1943, educated at Amherst, the Sorbonne, and Yale, and de-educated through intensive Zen practice. His many books include the bestselling Tao Te Ching, The Gospel According to Jesus, Bhagavad Gita, The Book of Job, Meetings with the Archangel, Gilgamesh, and the forthcoming The Second Book of the Tao. When he is not writing, he likes to ' in no particular order ' think about writing, think about not writing, not think about writing, and not think about not writing. His favorite color is blue, which happens to be the color of his wife's eyes. You can read extensive excerpts from all his books on his website, www.stephenmitchellbooks.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Grimm retelling for the 21st Century, November 16, 1999

By 

Jeanne M. Beaumont (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults (Hardcover)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truest love story, April 18, 2001

By 

Vira Kovalova (Mobile, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults (Hardcover)

Seems that there has not been enough romance in our busy lives lately... so Mr. Mitchell decided to give you something to fall in love with. This story is a pure delight from the first page to the last. I'm sure you'd enjoy playful historical insights and delicate language (the story takes place in France - the motherland of true romance). But this is all the shell - the pearl is the love story itself. We all know the actual tale, Stephen Mitchell, however, makes it unfold along with two strong and complex characters. Both lonely and proud princess and ugly frog have to overcome their fears to finally fall in love with each other. It's not easy for a frog to become human, it's never easy for a princess to find her prince. Stephen Mitchell describes the romance not as the love is born, but as it makes its way through to change them both. - No matter where you are in your relationship with somebody, this book is sure to make you kinder to that somebody.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, January 17, 2002

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Frog Prince: A Fairy Tale for Consenting Adults (Hardcover)

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.