Monday, April 28, 2014
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, review
Emma Donoghue likes to build fiction from fact. The plot of Frog Music is based on a murder that happened near San Francisco, in the steamy heatwave of 1896, during a raging epidemic of smallpox. The four central characters of this novel were real people, but Donoghue's purpose is less to solve the puzzle of their intertwined lives, and more to explore her ongoing preoccupations with the sometimes uncomfortable bonds that bind us.
A story of chance acquaintance between two spirited young women becomes a subtle inquiry into the possibilities of motherhood, love and sexual freedom. In what does "the power of men" consist? And what does "freedom" mean for the audacious heroines Donoghue re-creates for us here?
Blanche Beaunon is a French prostitute who provides for Arthur, her pimp. They were once both circus performers in Paris, but are happy to live the free and easy life in San Francisco, where they share their all with Arthur's shady friend, Ernest. A bicycle accident brings the cross-dressing Jenny Bonnet on to the scene, and – as this enchanting free spirit takes hold of her life – Blanche begins to question herself. She starts to long for a baby she had, which Arthur arranged to be "cared for". She rescues the child from horrifying conditions. Arthur and Ernest are appalled, as Blanche stops turning tricks to nurture her son.
Things get ugly pretty quickly, and Blanche is forced to leave town with Jenny. The couple are briefly happy, but when Jenny is murdered, Blanche finds herself with no home, no baby, no money, no friends, and no idea of how to proceed.
Blanche's fraught journey to independence is artfully structured through flashbacks, fast-forwards and moments of stillness. As the story twists towards and away from its central event, Blanche comes to see that most people are "a crazy quilt of fact and fiction". The joy of it all is to watch Blanche becoming as fond of invention as Donoghue is. By the end, she has learnt to lie and enjoy it. She stops "trying to make sense of Jenny", and sees their short, shared drama as "something from a children's rhyme". Children's rhymes are potent and hard to forget. Frog Music is the same.
Frog Music
Emma Donoghue
Picador, 492pp, Telegraph offer price: £14.99 plus £1.35 p&p (RRP £16.99). Call 0844 871 1515 or see books.telegraph.co.uk
LIST: Emma Donoghue on unconventional fictional families
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/39d21ead/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Cbooks0Cbookreviews0C10A7779490CFrog0EMusic0Eby0EEmma0EDonoghue0Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
