Frog Music

A Novel

By: Emma Donoghue

Narrated by: Khristine Hvam

Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

A French burlesque dancer risks everything to bring a killer to justice in this gripping historical novel from the author of Room: "her greatest achievement yet" (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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Emma Donoghue (P)2014 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A riveting literary thriller.... Donoghue brilliantly conjures the chaos of a boomtown in the grip of both a heat wave and a smallpox epidemic; her cast of colorful lowlifes includes the freeloading Arthur and his sycophantic best friend, Ernest. But it's Blanche and Jenny who hold our attention.... FROG MUSIC begins with a mystery: Who killed Jenny? But it enthralls with two other questions: Who was Jenny? Who will Blanche become?"—Karen Holt, O, The Oprah Magazine

"FROG MUSIC...[brings] to steamy life the unresolved so-called San Miguel Mystery.... Donoghue front-loads the ­drama.... She captures San Francisco in all its ­melting-pot, fishy-smelling glory, and weaves in authentic ­details about smallpox outbreaks, race riots, and orphan­ages. ­Jenny Bonnet is an incendiary character pulled directly from the history books.... Her extraordinary life gives Donoghue's novel contemporary resonance."—Elyse Moody, Elle

"More fine work from one of popular fiction's most talented practitioners.... 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."—Kirkus Reviews

Frog music

This was a good mystery with real character development. I found the author kept rehashing the same points over and over. What I liked about the book was its ability to rehash those same points with many different outcomes which kept the mystery going.

I'm a fan of the author

She still aims and hits her target (my peaked interest) everytime. I quite loved the narrator of this story. I will say it was not as good as slimmerkin but definitely worth the listen.

Cross-dressing, prostitution and smallpox!

This tale of 1876 San Francisco crosscuts between the August initial meeting of a cross-dressing free spirit and a French prostitute and the September murder of the former and the latter's attempt to have justice done. There is much historical color, apparently well researched, including quite interesting revelations of the "baby-farming" business.

To the negative, the narrator murders the many songs of the period that she is called upon to sing; she could have learned the accurate tunes, mostly available elsewhere, or simply spoken them as she occasionally does. She does not do a bad job with the heavy French accents required for much of the dialog.

Story premise better than execution

I think this story could be much better and deserves some more work - a major rewrite and editing - to turn out a revised edition. Fewer jumps back and forth in time would already improve the listening/reading experience. It’s too confusing and there’s also a redundant loop of same material. The characters aren’t as well fleshed out in this story as in the first story I listened to by Emma Donaghue called Landing. Landing is still my favorite by this author. In Frog Music there were some sex scenes that were too graphic for my taste. The best part of story was the satisfying conclusion, so, I’m glad I had confidence in the author to deliver a good ending. I hope I find some of the author’s other books as well written as Landing. P.S. I think there were some errors in the French phrases.

Just a struggle

At first I was very drawn into this, then it became a chore. Am I alone? I don't buy the characters, or the mystery, and I didn't care about them in the end. That's fatal for me.

Good premise but jambled

The premises and possibilities of this book are really good. It's an interesting time, some interesting characters and a good mystery. But the flash backs are completely confusing and really could have been handled better. Something as simple as a date over the chapter so you could get what was past and what was further on. I'm not sorry I read it, and it's a fascinating view of Old San Francisco. But very hard to follow.

Mediocre

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I loved Donoghue's Room but this actually left me numb. It dances between the present and past. The protagonist sort of wins at the end and that was upbeat…but thats it.

Would you recommend Frog Music to your friends? Why or why not?

No. I don't think the story line was worthwhile enough.

What does Khristine Hvam bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Actually, the narration was better than the storyline.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No.

Enjoyable Read

Where does Frog Music rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's probably up there in the 80th percentile of like ability. I've read some I liked more and a lot I've liked less.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Frog Music?

Can't think of anything I can talk about without giving something away to future readers

Have you listened to any of Khristine Hvam’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think so, she did a wonderful job with this one

If you could take any character from Frog Music out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Jenny Bonnet, because she was such a unique character

Any additional comments?

It is definitely worth it's cost 😃

Donoghue + Hvam = entertainment

I am a fan of both Ms. Donoghue and Ms. Hvam, so imagine my happiness when they collaborate to entertain me. This book was engaging and interesting. I did find it a bit confusing because the author kept going back and forth between time periods, but that seems to be a writing technique that is very popular now. The storyline, set in San Francisco in the late 19th century was fascinating and I learned a few things I had never heard about ie: baby farms and cross dressing as a crime. The characters were not particularly likeable, except for Jennie, but I did feel that the author delved into what made them the people they were. I enjoy historically based novels because in an entertaining way they bring up facts I wasnt aware of, that I can later research. Ms.Hvams narration was excellent as always, she is able to conjure up many different accents realistically and move between them flawlessly! Despite this not being a perfect novel, I think it's entertaining and worth your time and credit.

True Crime, Great Yarn

I found out after finishing this book, as I listened to a short NPR interview with Emma Donoghue, that she'd based her latest story on a true crime that took place in California in 1876: "On the very outskirts of San Francisco, in a grimy bar, a lot of bullets came through a window and they killed one woman in the room, Jenny Bonnet, who was a professional frog catcher. And they left the other woman, Blanche Beunon, a burlesque dancer, unharmed", she told the interviewer. Basing herself on numerous court transcripts and newspaper articles, she found material which was too good to make up; the city was in the middle of a major heatwave and a devastating smallpox epidemic; the victim Jenny Bonnet was a professional frog-catcher who sold her goods to local restaurants and liked to wear men's clothes, which was a punishable offence in the city of San Francisco and landed her in jail numerous times. The other woman, Blanche Beunon was a French immigrant who made her living as a burlesque dancer and prostitute. These two women, along with the city of San Francisco itself, a ramshackle place quickly thrown together by "miners, restaurateurs and prostitutes" are Donoghue's main characters, from which she fleshed out her story, creating plausible lives for the two women and imagining how the two might have crossed paths and come to be in that room together on the fatal night.

The main character is Blanche, who at first is content with her life, making men drool and throw money at her feet with her naughty stage acts and 'michetons', the rich customers she charges healthy fees for sexual favours. But when Jenny Bonnet literally slams into her with her outlandish machine, in the form of a large front-wheel bicycle, and the two unconventional women start developing a friendship, questions raised by Jenny force Blanche to look at her life from a new perspective. Donoghue, while not condoning or condemning prositution, raises question about how it affects women's lives in the larger picture. In this case, Blanche has had a baby by her French boyfriend, who abhors the 'Bourgeois' but has no qualms comfortably living off her earnings, and who had arranged for the newborn to be farmed out to "Angel Makers", a form of childcare for desperate parents known as such because the children likely to die from neglect. Up until her encounter with Jenny, Blanche had conveniently put the whole matter out of her mind and never visited the place where her child was kept, imagining, as she was led to believe, that the child lived in the fresh air of a country farm, away from city pollution and dirt. But from the sudden shocking awareness of what Petit's living conditions have actually been for the first year of his life, a mother's love will force her to make difficult choices which will have repercussions on many lives.

I read Donoghue's Slammerkin many years ago, and must say I haven't had the courage to broach Room yet, but in this new novel, she returns in good form to one of my favourite genres and delivers a historical novel that crackles with life and realistic details and characters, and makes for a really great yarn from beginning to end, for what is a basically an unputdownable read.

I've listened to Khristine Hvam narrate other books before and while she is a good narrator, my beef with her is that she seems to have just one cookie-cutter foreign accent which I've heard her use for both Czech and French accents most unconvincingly. Of course, in my case, being a fluent French speaker, a bad French accent is bound to grate on the ears, and in this case, since the main protagonist is French, there is a lot of grating to be endured, but to Hvam's credit, the delivery was good enough for this to be a minor quibble and didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of this audiobook. Definitely recommended.