Frog Music cover art

Frog Music

 Preview

Get 30 days of Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30-day free trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Inspired by a true unsolved crime, Frog Music is a gripping historical novel by Emma Donoghue, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller Room.

San Francisco, 1876: a stifling heat wave and smallpox epidemic have engulfed the City.

Deep in the streets of Chinatown live three former stars of the Parisian circus: Blanche, now an exotic dancer at the House of Mirrors, her lover Arthur and his companion Ernest.

When an eccentric outsider joins their little circle, secrets unravel, changing everything – and leaving one of them dead.

A New York Times bestseller, Frog Music is a dark and compelling story of intrigue and murder.

 Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Mystery Fiction Witty Crime

Critic reviews

‘Time and again, Emma Donoghue writes books that are unlike anything I have ever seen before.’ Ann Patchett
‘Emma Donoghue is one of the great literary ventriloquists of our time. Her imagination is kaleidoscopic. She steps borders and boundaries with great ease and style. In her hands the centuries dissolve, and then they crystallize back again into powerful words on the page.’ Colum McCann
All stars
Most relevant
This is a 12 hour book that really felt like it took 12 hours to listen to - interesting (and apparently based on a true) story but inordinately slow moving. The narrator really tries and the reading and accents are excellent. It just needed to be no more than half its actual length.

Lovely performance but a rather slow moving story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Where does Frog Music rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The first audiobook I've listened to in years and a great story. I may actually want to read it in print as well because I enjoyed it so much. It has provided me with great distraction during my half marathon preparations.

Narration must be a difficult thing, particularly where accents are concerned. I do think that perhaps just narrating without adding accents would probably still work!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Jenny, probably, although it's hard not to like Blanche.

Did Khristine Hvam do a good job differentiating each of the characters? How?

Some of the accents went awry, particularly the Irish accents and there wasn't a vast deal of difference between the French men and the Italian. The pseudo Chinese was edging pastiche. But the accent trouble was only mildly irritating - the book has such a strong story that it didn't detract too much.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Not without massive spoilers.

Any additional comments?

Loved the story. It was thrilling, engaging and evocative. Loved many of the characters. Didn't find it that easy to keep track of where I was in the narrative due to the structure of the book - that would be easier to do when reading the print copy. Wasn't overly enamoured of some of the attempts at accents.

An engaging, frank and thrilling story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was so excited to see a new novel by the author of Room, one of the most moving, thoughtful and insightful books I've read in years.

I downloaded it without hesitation and started listening...

First I fell asleep while listening (without the sleep timer on), so I decided to give it a fighting chance and start back at the beginning, convinced it was my fault for being too tired to listen properly... I stated again...

It was such a bitter disappointment to realise that this just isn't for me; I tried and tried but whether it's the characterisation (an astonishing strength of donoghue's last novel) which felt sketchy to the point of threadbare and borderline characatured, or whether it was the narration (more on that later) I don't know. Either way, after about 4 or 5 good attempts at getting past he initial "hump" to see if I could go the distance, I've reached my Waterloo I fear! This book is not for me.

A word on narration; you're selling an audiobook to the European market. The main character is a Frenchwoman, to be narrated with a French accent, and the book contains frequent use of French quotes and comments... PICK A FRENCH SPEAKING NARRATOR!!!

I'm sure many people will love this book but it's not for me :-(

To be fair I haven't listened all the way through

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
narrator's French accent was a little offputting as was her Calamity Jane but the story was strong enough to pull through. Not sure if it worked as an audio.

lost in the performance...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved the story. The characters were vibrant and exciting, their lives entwining and then unraveling beautifully. This is a whodunnit, inspired by true events in 1876 San Francisco, during a heat wave and small pox epidemic.
The narrator does a reasonable job of telling the story but I found her different accents a bit off key from time to time. However, it was worth overlooking these very minor irritations because, she managed to convey the story well enough and accents can be difficult.
Highly recommended.

Great story telling!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews