- Published: 1 February 2022
- ISBN: 9780143775492
- Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $36.00
The Frog Prince
- Published: 1 February 2022
- ISBN: 9780143775492
- Imprint: RHNZ Vintage
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $36.00
The Frog Prince is anything but narrow in focus, its author including literary history and technique, children's folk stories, 20th century European history and human relationships with all their faults and missteps. It is also highly engaging . . . Norcliffe's delight of landscape, nature, myth and pure love of story power through the work. Throughout his interweaving stories, art's aesthetics and pure enchantment work to burst out of reality's murky and uncertain depths.
Jessie Neilson, Kete
He is able to sort of invest the ordinary world with magical numinous qualities to make it rich and strange . . . This is a wonderfully subversive retelling of the conventional storytelling. Usually in those stories the male is virile, powerful, handsome, and the female is sort of passive and virginal, well, in this story Cara is emphatically not virginal and certainly not passive. David on the other hand, the prince if you like, is diffident, he's tentative . . . one of Norcliffe's achievements in the book is, as I say, to invert, subvert the traditional fairy story and move you towards an ending . . which is unexpected, successfully unclimactic . . . a very accomplished, lucid stylist, and he holds a complicated plot and major range of characters together right through the novel.
David Hill, Radio NZ
A charming novel that explores the possible origins of the fairy tale ‘The Frog Prince or Iron Heinrich’, Norcliffe employs a neat dual narrative structure to understand how stories change when ‘context changes’. . . . Norcliffe’s writing is jovial and sweet, and the gorgeous cover rightly indicates the light-hearted fiction within. Though some of the passages are dialogue heavy, there’s a wonderful warmth in the style and tone. . . . The Frog Prince is a delightful novel about the power of love and the stories that shape our lives. Entertaining and engaging, Norcliffe’s gentle style will appeal to many readers.
Josie Shapiro, ANZL
Christchurch author James Norcliffe is best known to me for his wonderful books for children, so this title was a real surprise. His adult debut creates a backstory for the Grimm Brothers fairytale, but adds a modern take of love and loss. There’s a Kiwi link as the three stories stretch across continents and centuries. I loved it.
Kate Watson, Style
Most of us grew up on the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales . . . They're pretty brutal stories for kids. Norcliffe's novel successfully weaves the Frog Prince story with a modern love story that goes horribly wrong . . . you'll be intrigued to see where the fairytale and modern romance collide.
Linda Thompson, Wairarapa Times Age
New Zealand Booklovers Awards
Shortlisted • 2023 • NZ Booklovers Awards