Stevie‘s review of Frog Music: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
Literary Historical Mystery Fiction published by Little, Brown and Company 01 Apr 14
My previous experience of Emma Donoghue’s work was through one of her short story collections, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and the first chapter of this novel could stand alone as a short story in its own right, were it not for the obvious feeling that there’s much more to learn about the characters we have just briefly met. Told in third person, present tense, this is a complex historical mystery based on the true story of an unsolved crime with wonderfully rich details that completely immerse readers in the era without them ever feeling that the author’s extensive research is showing through.
The story opens dramatically with a murder and then jumps backwards and forwards over the preceding month as Blanche, the heroine, tries to unravel who killed her friend and why. Blanche is a French immigrant in post-Gold Rush San Francisco, who makes her living as a burlesque dancer and high-class prostitute, supporting two men with her earnings. On top of that, she has also managed to save enough to buy the building in China Town that she and the men live in – along with a host of tenants – and to keep money stashed away in two hiding places. Blanche’s lover, Arthur, and his best friend, Ernest, are gamblers and ‘investors’ who lose or spend far more money than they ever bring home with them, much to Blanche’s disgust. The three were originally circus performers, who came to America after Arthur was injured in a fall from the trapeze, and Blanche accepts her lot for the most part, until the day she meets Jenny Bonnet.
Jenny is an enigma, asking far more questions than she answers, and while her first meeting with Blanche seems to happen by chance, it later transpires that she had previously visited the underground bar in which Blanche regularly performs. Jenny rides a (stolen) penny-farthing bicycle, wears men’s clothing (for which she is regularly arrested), and makes her living by catching frogs to sell to a French restaurateur. From their first meeting, it is apparent that Jenny is at least a little bit in love with Blanche, and her constant questions make Blanche re-examine aspects of her life she has previously taken for granted.
When Blanche goes looking for the ‘farm’ to which her baby was fostered out, she is drawn into the horrific world of those who take in babies for money – the more of both the better – and then neglect their charges. Blanche rescues her baby, but then, just as she’s getting used to being a mother, a row with Arthur and Ernest leads to her losing him again. Blanche and Jenny flee the city to the tiny hamlet of San Miguel Station, where they consummate their relationship, but then Jenny is murdered and Blanche sets out to find both the killer and her son.
Although the real Jenny Bonnet case was never solved, this novel offers one possible explanation based on the author’s impressive research, and also introduces the reader to a host of contemporary song lyrics, along with giving tantalising glimpses of the seedy side of life in late 19th Century California. Highly recommended.
Grade: A
Summary:
From the author of the worldwide bestseller Room: “Her greatest achievement yet…Emma Donoghue shows more than range with FROG MUSIC–she shows genius.” — Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life
Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny’s murderer to justice–if he doesn’t track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It’s the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue’s lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.
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