It’s so repetitive that it appears to be aimed at an audience more distracted and less intelligent than the one that embraced “Room. But it feels simultaneously scattered and overstuffed - including with lyrics to numerous old songs, which don’t make great reading. With its choppy chronology, “Frog Music” seems partly to be an experiment with form. Editorial Review No editorial review at this time. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghues lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. Donoghue returns here to the historical fiction. In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. What she hasn’t done is made from all this research a novel that lives and breathes on its own. In the sweltering fall of 1876, a San Francisco prostitute tracks a killer and searches for her stolen baby. Frog Music is the best kind of historical fiction: as authentic in its emotions and characterizations as it is in its archival details. Donoghue has tracked down minute details of these obscure individuals’ time on earth, and she has learned vast amounts about San Francisco in the late 19th century. As she tries to convince investigators of the men’s guilt, Blanche fears not only for her own life but also for that of P’tit, whom Arthur and Ernest are hiding from her.ĭonoghue, who is not new to historical fiction, sank deep into research for “Frog Music.” She doesn’t seem to have clawed her way back out.Īs she explains in an author’s note, nearly every one of the many named characters in the book is based on someone real. Blanche quickly becomes convinced that Arthur and Ernest are the culprits and that they meant to kill her, not Jenny. (Lackluster reviews of the latter may have expressed some.

The women are together when the murderer strikes. Emma Donoghue’s breakthrough novel, the overpraised Room, was followed by a much better one, the underpraised Frog Music.

Frog music book review