Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
"Frog Music" (Little, Brown and Co.), by Emma Donoghue
In 1876 in San Francisco, amid a heat wave and smallpox epidemic, an idiosyncratic frog-catching, pants-wearing, bicycle-riding woman is fatally shot through the window of a railroad boarding house.
This real-life unsolved murder is the basis of Emma Donoghue's new novel, "Frog Music." The story is told through Blanche Beunon, a burlesque dancer who is in the same room when her friend Jenny Bonnet is killed.
The novel goes back and forth between the shell-shocked, mystery-solving Blanche and her earlier, erotic-dancing, carefree self. Along the way, Donoghue masterfully transports readers to an era of dung-covered cobbled roads, unspeakably cruel baby farms, deep suspicion of Chinese immigrants and unruly saloons.
What "Frog Music" lacks, however, is the gripping storytelling that made Donoghue's previous novel "Room" — about a mother and son held captive — such a beautifully poignant read. The premise of "Frog Music" is wild enough, and yet Donoghue pushes it over the top with explicit sex scenes, then bogs it down with daily minutiae that does little to enhance the story or its characters — or make us care for them much. Even the central whodunnit question doesn't garner much suspense and is ultimately resolved without much satisfaction.
Ironically, the Author's Note section of the book, which explains what characters and facts came from historical records and newspaper articles, was a more interesting read than the novel that preceded it.
___
Online:
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.