Frog Music

by Professor Emma Donoghue

"Emma Donoghue's explosive new novel, based on an unsolved murder in 1876 San Francisco. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heatwave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman called 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"--

• ISBN10: 031632468X
• ISBN13: 9780316324687
• Publish Date: 1 April 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown & Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[lovelybookshelf]

Originally posted on my blog, A Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall:

Frog-catcher Jenny Bonnet, an unorthodox young woman often jailed for wearing men's clothing, is shot dead one evening, the bullet narrowly missing her friend Blanche Beunon, a former circus horseback rider turned exotic dancer. In her new novel Frog Music, Emma Donoghue takes this actual unsolved murder from the intense heat wave and smallpox epidemic of 1876 San Francisco and creates a powerful look into the lives of the city's outcasts.

There's so much inside this story that gives a clear picture of societal attitudes and norms of the time, including matters tucked away out of sight, out of mind. The latter being, without giving anything away, one of the most appalling and heart-wrenching things I've read about in a long time.

Frog Music is altogether exciting, suspenseful, tragic, unsavory, and scandalous. Its characters are gritty and flawed in all the best ways. Donoghue writes in a naturally beautiful style, interspersing smatterings of French throughout (there's a glossary in the back of the book), but the pace is quick, which kept me turning page after page.

There is so much more I want to say, but I'm holding back because those things caught me by surprise as I was reading. Let's just say, I think this book would give reading groups a wealth of topics to discuss.

As a musician, I was especially thrilled to find Song Notes in the appendix of the book, filled with background information about the music that appears throughout the story. I ended up making a playlist of most of the songs listed in the appendix.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.