MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
Set against the 1876 San Francisco heat wave and smallpox epidemic and based on a true unsolved murder, this is the story of how a chance meeting and the tragic events that followed helped a young woman discover her self-worth. Khristine Hvam's broad range of accents and beautifully expressive performance give this audiobook a dimension not found in print. Especially impressive is how naturally Hvam slips into song, giving listeners an extra connection with the novel. Hvam's theatrical training is evident in her skillful rendering of the characters' personalities and emotions—from the cocksure, cross-dressing, frog-hunting Jenny to the seductive, sometimes fearful Blanche and the arrogant, manipulative Arthur. A bonus disc with a PDF of the print book's appendices rounds out the audiobook experience. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 12/16/2013
Donoghue’s first literary crime novel is a departure from her bestselling Room, but it’s just as dark and just as gripping as the latter. Based on the circumstances surrounding the grizzly real-life murder of Jenny Bonnet, a law-flouting, pants-wearing frog catcher who lived in San Francisco in the mid-1870s, this investigation into who pulled the trigger is told in episodic flashbacks from the point of view of Blanche Beunon. Blanche is a raunchy, self-absorbed burlesque dancer and French émigré who befriended the alluring Bonnet and was with her on the night she was killed. Also woven into the plot is Blanche’s sordid relationship with Albert Deneve, an ex–tightrope walker, and his minion Ernest, who may have had a hand in the murder while swindling Blanche out of house, home, and one-year-old baby. Aside from the obvious whodunit factor, the book is filled with period song lyrics and other historic details, expertly researched and flushed out. The sweltering heat wave and smallpox epidemic that afflicted thousands in 1876, the Sinophobic takedown of Chinese businesses, and the proliferation of baby farms—glorified dumping grounds for unwanted babies—are all integrated into the story of Bonnet’s tragic end. Donoghue’s signature talent for setting tone and mood elevates the book from common cliffhanger to a true chef d’oeuvre. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"Donoghue's latest novel has many facets, all of them fascinating.... Like her hair-raising best-seller Room, it incorporates the elements of a thriller; in fact, there's enough puzzle here to qualify as a full-blooded mystery. Best of all, there's Donoghue's intricate examination of women in impossible circumstances, bound to repugnant men for survival but never broken by them.... Colorful French slang and period songs...flow through the novel lyrically, making the era as vital as the plot. Donoghue is acrobatic with her storytelling and language and paints the stinking city vividly.... [A] vibrant and remarkable novel."—San Jose Mercury News
"An engrossing read."—June Thomas, NY1's "The Book Reader"
"A page-turner of a mystery with rich historical texture.... Atop the mystery, Ms. Donoghue masterfully overlays another story about motherhood and obligation, and friendship-even desire-between women. [She] manifests her genius by weaving the two together."—Julie Hakim Azzam, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Where Donoghue excels is in her descriptions of 19th century squalor.... Poignant."—Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times
"Endlessly intriguing.... You'll find yourself enraptured by the intricate plot developments that will keep you revising your version of the action from one hour to the next."—Maude McDaniel, BookPage
"Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne.... [An] ingenious telling."—David Kipen, Wall Street Journal
"[An] ebullient mystery..... Donoghue cross-cuts between Blanche's desperate present-time search and scenes from her Technicolor past with showstopping aplomb.... It's all great fun, and so richly atmospheric.... Astonishing details are scattered like party nuts.... Donoghue also provides riotous musical accompaniment for her narrative.... Call it a mind-bendingly original crime novel, or a dazzling historical mystery, but in the end, this is really a book about love-a mother's love for a strange child, for an exotic friend and finally, for herself."—Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle
"In Jenny the frog-catcher, Donoghue has resurrected a true original-witty, perceptive, iconoclastic and nearly indomitable."—Kathy Ewing, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"FROG MUSIC is miles away from the traditional who-done-it, and rather more colorful than your mama's historical fiction...[and] should appeal to those who don't mind their history with grit and unflinching details."—Brooke Wylie, Examiner
"Whether the crime is stranger than fiction or simply more colorful than anything a writer would dare to invent, the true story of Jeanne Bonnet is a scandalous delight."—Sara Breselor, 7x7SF
"The authenticity Donoghue brings to her work, something of a signature, lends richness and verisimilitude to the book. FROG MUSIC is a can't-miss work."—Terri Schlichenmeyer, Washington Blade
"As with Room, the book thrives on Donoghue's precisely poignant details.... This is a book to cherish, to share with your friends and book clubs, to buy for every reader on your Christmas list, and to read again in a few years. Adored is not too strong a word to describe my feelings for it. My one wish: Emma Donoghue, could you please write faster?"—Joy Tipping, Dallas Morning News
"Room's eloquent author brings the same sensitivity to this period piece, which explores the unsolved 1876 San Francisco murder of Jenny Bonnet through the eyes of the bohemian friend she left behind."—InStyle
"The setting [Blanche] inhibits is alive, brimming with sin and music."—New Yorker
"Donoghue depicts with feeling the new parent's confusion, anxiety and guilt—not just 'Am I doing the right thing?' but 'Am I feeling the right thing-.... Respect for the facts lets the book sprawl towards its final revelations. The effect is a rough if vital music, not unlike Blanche's own repertoire."—Adrian Turpin, Financial Times
"Donoghue has a gift for place, for setting, for wringing anxiety and drama out of the spaces her characters occupy, as well as for taking real-life events and rendering them realer and sharper than they were the first time around.... It's a bizarre story through and through, and Donoghue more than does it justice, drawing for the reader a (clearly assiduously researched) world that feels both too strange to be real and too vivid not to be."—Ellen Cushing, East Bay Express
"The perfect highbrow historical murder mystery summer read.... Working from actual historic record, Donoghue...masterfully fleshes out San Francisco's demi-monde of French émigré performers and pimps.... [and her] pacing is exemplary.... FROG MUSIC also makes a case for the return of blatant eroticism to mainstream literature. Blanche Buenon's world is one of sex and prostitution, Jenny's one of subverting her gender expectations, and both women have a charged sexuality that simmers like that summer heat wave under the surface of the novel. Donoghue handles graphic sexual scenes deftly, never compromising the frank and lustful point of view of her main character."—Leigh Baldwin, San Antonio Current
Sarah Johnson
"Donoghue flawlessly combines literary eloquence and vigorous plotting in her first full-fledged mystery, a work as original and multifaceted as its young murder victim.... An engrossing and suspenseful tale about moral growth, unlikely friendship, and breaking free from the past."
Darin Strauss
"Emma Donoghue shows more than range with FROG MUSIC-she shows genius. Like and unlike her stunning ROOM, this novel lifts into view a strange crime, a remarkable woman, and is a Ringling Brothers-grade feat of narrative strength. As ever, Donoghue focuses on people on the skirts of the world, who make their way outside the common middle of things. Blanche and Jenny are characters you will never forget, filmed in vibrant, cinemascope prose, and they mark Emma Donoghue's greatest achievement yet."
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Donoghue's first literary crime novel is a departure from her bestselling Room, but it's just as dark and just as gripping as the latter.... Aside from the obvious whodunit factor, the book is filled with period song lyrics and other historic details, expertly researched and flushed out.... Donoghue's signature talent for setting tone and mood elevates the book from common cliffhanger to a true chef d'oeuvre."
MARCH 2014 - AudioFile
Set against the 1876 San Francisco heat wave and smallpox epidemic and based on a true unsolved murder, this is the story of how a chance meeting and the tragic events that followed helped a young woman discover her self-worth. Khristine Hvam's broad range of accents and beautifully expressive performance give this audiobook a dimension not found in print. Especially impressive is how naturally Hvam slips into song, giving listeners an extra connection with the novel. Hvam's theatrical training is evident in her skillful rendering of the characters' personalities and emotions—from the cocksure, cross-dressing, frog-hunting Jenny to the seductive, sometimes fearful Blanche and the arrogant, manipulative Arthur. A bonus disc with a PDF of the print book's appendices rounds out the audiobook experience. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2013-11-27
In the sweltering fall of 1876, a San Francisco prostitute tracks a killer and searches for her stolen baby. Donoghue returns here to the historical fiction genre in which she first made her international mark (Slammerkin, 2000, etc.), but she's blended in the suspense craft she acquired writing her contemporary mega-seller Room (2010). Who fired the shotgun blasts that blew away Jenny Bonnet while her friend Blanche bent down to take off her boots? Blanche believes it was her lover Arthur or his sidekick, Ernest, who have been living on her earnings as a high-priced erotic dancer/whore. They weren't happy when Jenny goaded Blanche into retrieving her 1-year-old son, P'tit, from the ghastly holding pen for unwanted children where Arthur dumped him while Blanche was ill. And Jenny is killed while Blanche is hiding out in the countryside with her after an ugly scene with Arthur and Ernest that led Blanche to flee their apartment without P'tit. The men blame Jenny for Blanche's newfound, unwelcome independence, but there are plenty of other people in San Francisco who dislike the defiant, cross-dressing frog-catcher, who presents herself as an untamed free spirit. There's far more to Jenny's story, we learn, as Donoghue cuts between Blanche's hunt for her son in mid-September and the events of August, when her collision with bicycle-riding Jenny led to their unlikely friendship. By the time the murderer is revealed, we understand why Jenny knows so much about abandoned children, and we've seen how Blanche has been changed by her hesitant commitment to motherhood. (Some of the book's funniest, most touching moments depict her early struggles to care for "this terrible visitor," her baby.) Donoghue's vivid rendering of Gilded Age San Francisco is notable for her atmospheric use of popular songs and slang in Blanche's native French, but the book's emotional punch comes from its portrait of a woman growing into self-respect as she takes responsibility for the infant life she's created. More fine work from one of popular fiction's most talented practitioners.
