Ms. Hen reviews Frog Music

Frog Music

Emma Donoghue

Back Bay Books

2014

Ms. Hen picked this book up at the Little Free Library in Harvard Square in front of the Science Center. She wandered to Cambridge one day, and she did not know why, but she found this book and realized that was the reason. She has read other books by Ms. Donoghue before, and she thoroughly enjoyed them.

Whenever Ms. Hen goes on a trip, she reads novels about her destination. This year, she read a crop of books about San Francisco for her vacation, but she did not love most of them. She didn’t know about FROG MUSIC then, a historical crime novel that takes place in San Francisco. The city shines through in these pages, Ms. Hen could see and smell what was happening in San Francisco while she read this book. The hills, and the immigrants, and the desperation of people with a thirst for gold and fear of smallpox come alive when she read this. Ms. Hen thinks this is a visceral novel.

FROG MUSIC is about Blanche Beunon, a French dance hall girl who becomes fast friends with a cross-dressing woman, Jenny Bonnet, when Jenny hits her with her high-wheeler bike. Jenny is a frog catcher for restaurants in San Francisco. Blanche does not usually become friends with women; she lives with her lover, Arthur, and their friend, Ernest. Jenny has just spend some time in jail for wearing men’s clothes. She goes home with Blanche who tells her about P’tit Arthur, her baby, who she believes is on a farm, but she soon discovers lives in squalid conditions in a home not too far from the House of Mirrors, the club where she dances.

At the beginning of the novel, Jenny is murdered. The storyline goes back and forth to the time right before the murder to the month before when Blanche meets Jenny. Blanche decides that Jenny turns her life upside down because she is the one who makes her think of looking for the baby, P’tit. A baby cramps Blanche’s style, she is a stripper and a prostitute, but an expensive one, and she makes a lot of money working.  She made so much that she was able to buy the building where she lives.

Arthur calls her his little bourgeois, since they met when he was a trapeze artist in the circus in France, and she joined to do the horse act. They started their affair, and they aspired to live la vie boheme, the bohemian life.

Ms. Hen thinks this book is fantastic, and a lot happens between the pages. It’s about San Francisco as a young city; it’s also about the United States as a burgeoning country; it’s about racism against Asian people in Chinatown, and it’s about love and the quest for love. It’s also about social taboos; Blanche is a prostitute who owns property, which at that time in history, might be an unthinkable venture in other parts of the world. She doesn’t care about anyone's opinion of her, she likes having a good time, but the love of her child gets the best of her. The murder of her friend terrifies her, and the world comes crashing down. Blanche is not a typical person.

This novel is based on true events. Ms. Hen thinks it’s astounding that Jenny and Blanche existed once, and the murder of Jenny remains a mystery. Ms. Hen thinks this novel is cinematic and she believes it could make a breathtaking movie. She doesn’t think this of every book she reads. There are certain parts that Ms. Hen would like to see on film, such as Blanche’s dancing. Ms. Hen recommends this novel to anyone who wants to get swept away.