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A review by katykelly
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue
4.0
A very different beast to Room.
I was reminded of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and Fingersmith as I read this. Emma Donoghue has used a real murder case, as did Kate Summerscale (Mr Whicher), and used excellent historical detail of the same period, that of Victorian San Francisco suffering a heat wave, to make the setting come alive.
A young woman, Jenny, known for wearing men's clothing, is gunned down in a small town near San Francisco. Blanche is certain she knows who murdered her friend right in front of her. We spend the novel discovering what led these two women to run away from the city, meeting Blanche's suave but dangerous lover and her farmed-out baby boy along the way, while seeing all the sights of a hot, murky 1870s Chinatown.
It's a long book, but I found that once I started it flowed easily and passed quickly. The setting comes to life: the heat, poverty, characters, all seem vivid as you read.
Like Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, your perceptions of the Victorian mystery keeps changing, though the twists aren't anything you couldn't guess. The author notes at the end that the crime was never actually solved so has used some guesswork and dramatic licence. I liked the way the plot unfolded, the eventual conclusion and loved following Blanche as a protagonist - a dancer, a (high clas) prostitute but unapologetic about it.
Reading a Kindle version, I do have one complaint. The glossary of French phrases at the end comes in order in which terms appear in the text. With no reference to page numbers or chapters I gave up checking the words, too much trouble to keep going back and forth looking for whole phrases. I would have preferred either page references or alphabetical order.
You don't need to be a fan of a Room to enjoy this. If you like historical fiction, crime mysteries and interesting female protagonists, this is worth a read.
Review of a Netgalley advance copy.
I was reminded of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and Fingersmith as I read this. Emma Donoghue has used a real murder case, as did Kate Summerscale (Mr Whicher), and used excellent historical detail of the same period, that of Victorian San Francisco suffering a heat wave, to make the setting come alive.
A young woman, Jenny, known for wearing men's clothing, is gunned down in a small town near San Francisco. Blanche is certain she knows who murdered her friend right in front of her. We spend the novel discovering what led these two women to run away from the city, meeting Blanche's suave but dangerous lover and her farmed-out baby boy along the way, while seeing all the sights of a hot, murky 1870s Chinatown.
It's a long book, but I found that once I started it flowed easily and passed quickly. The setting comes to life: the heat, poverty, characters, all seem vivid as you read.
Like Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, your perceptions of the Victorian mystery keeps changing, though the twists aren't anything you couldn't guess. The author notes at the end that the crime was never actually solved so has used some guesswork and dramatic licence. I liked the way the plot unfolded, the eventual conclusion and loved following Blanche as a protagonist - a dancer, a (high clas) prostitute but unapologetic about it.
Reading a Kindle version, I do have one complaint. The glossary of French phrases at the end comes in order in which terms appear in the text. With no reference to page numbers or chapters I gave up checking the words, too much trouble to keep going back and forth looking for whole phrases. I would have preferred either page references or alphabetical order.
You don't need to be a fan of a Room to enjoy this. If you like historical fiction, crime mysteries and interesting female protagonists, this is worth a read.
Review of a Netgalley advance copy.