The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

George Saunders

Saunders (Pastoralia) and illustrator Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man, James and the Giant Peach) team up to deliver this cautionary tale about helping your neighbors out of a jam. And while the story wears its moral far too plain on its face, the story itself, and the wonderfully twisted illustrations that accompany it, make it worth a read.

Capable and her father live in the very small town of Frip. It's so small, in fact, it only has three houses. Frip's whole economy is based on goat's milk. Which is all well and good, except for these odd little amphibians called gappers, who love goats, and shriek with joy when they see a goat. The shrieking makes the goats nervous, and causes them to stop giving milk. So life in Frip is a constant battle of keeping the gappers away from the goats.

Things get nasty when the gappers realize that Capable's house is the closest to the sea, and so they should all lavish their affections on Capable's herd. Which makes her neighbors very happy, since their goats are no longer plagued. They refuse to help her with her gappers, and thus the conflict at the center of the book is born.

This is exceptionally fun stuff. Perhaps having the Lane Smith illustrations put me more in mind of the late Roald Dahl than I otherwise would have been, but there is certainly a Dahl-esque feeling to Saunders' writing. Dahl was usually better at concealing his morals within the context of his stories (overly-moralizing oompah-loompahs excepted, of course), and so I have a hard time ranking Saunders with the best of Dahl's work. But it is a fine thing, and quite worth your time.