Set in San Francisco during the 1876 heatwave and smallpox epidemic, this is a story based loosely on known historical fact. Our heroine is Parisian-born Blanche, exotic dancer and prostitute, who lives with her lover Arthur and his companion Ernest. The other star of the story however is Blanche's new friend Jenny, eccentric rider of a penny-farthing, who dresses in male clothing and catches frogs for a living. And P'tit, baby P'tit.

This is a racy portrait of life in a sleazy city, one where crime is part of everyday life. It's a murder mystery too - a murder which wasn't solved at the time and is not entirely satisfactorily solved in this version of events.

I should have enjoyed this book. It wears its scholarship lightly, and the main characters are engagingly interesting. The references to popular music are entertaining. I guess I felt some very serious editing wouldn't have come amiss. 300 pages would have seen this story told and told well. I'm rather glad to have made it to the end. ( )

Choppy writing style. Cannot get into it. ( )

I really enjoyed Emma Donoghue’s Room so I was keen to read her latest novel. Frog Music is set in San Francisco in 1876, where the city is in the twin grips of a smallpox epidemic and a scorching heat wave. The novel explores the events surrounding an actual murder of the time, that of the cross-dressing frog catcher Jenny Bonnet.

The story is told from the point of view of Jenny’s friend Blanche, a French prostitute who dances and sings at a notorious brothel (another form of Frog Music?). Blanche is in a relationship with the gambling wastrel Arthur, with whom she has a son, P’tit, whom they have abandoned to the care of a baby farm.

Blanche encounters Jenny by accident and an attraction quickly forms. Jenny’s questioning leads Blanche to track down P’tit; she discovers him sickly and in dire need and rescues him, placing her professional and private relationships in immediate danger.

Shortly afterwards, Jenny is dead, shot through the window of a hotel bedroom. Blanche is sure that Arthur is responsible, and that Jenny was an accidental victim of an attempt on Blanche's life. She sets about trying to track down Arthur and avenge Jenny.

This is an entertaining book and a very good crime novel with a bit of a different setting. Donoghue keeps you guessing, and she also does a great job of describing San Francisco and the life of the underclass that Blanche is a part of. The only part of this book that did not ring true for me was that so much of the novel depends on Blanche’s maternal instincts for the misshapen, sickly and unloveable P’tit overcoming all of her desires for the life that she had. I’m afraid Donoghue’s Blanche just did not convince as somebody who would do that. ( )

This story just went on and on! I was speed reading this book just to get to the end............... ( )

Too long, too much of Blanche's thoughts dragging the story. Also no focus. The setting is the smallpox epidemic ravaging California and the discrimination of Chinese immigrants, with subplots (or main plot?) about Jenny's murder, Blanche's suspicions about who the killers are, and Blanche's reconciliation with her son whom she entrusted to an infant farm with her belatedly discovering how poor the care is. The only thing interesting about the book is the setting that the story took place in. ( )