If you read the incredible Man Booker Shortlisted Room a few years back, you'll already be obsessed with Emma Donoghue. Now the Irish writer is back with her new book Frog Music. It focuses on Blanche, a Parisian immigrant living in San Francisco in 1876 who makes a living for herself and her useless lover Arthur by performing naughty 'leg' shows at an upmarket men's club. Everything's going just fine until a chance meeting with a cross-dressing frog catcher named Jenny turns her world upside down.
The Debrief: All the characters in Frog Music are based on real-life people – where did you first hear about your frog-catching, trouser-wearing heroine, Jenny?
Emma Donoghue: She’s a gem! I think I found a page on her in this compilation book called Wild Women and she turned out to be this professional ‘frog catcher’ and I got more and more fascinated by her. In the history of cross-dressing, it’s normally all terribly serious stories of people trying to disguise themselves for life. But Jenny Bonnet was just so modern. She insisted on the right to wear trousers; we are the spiritual heirs to women like her.
DB: How did you find out about the seedy side of San Francisco?
ED: Well, I used a lot of photos for getting a sense what Blanche’s performances would have been like. All I knew was that she was in kind of dirty dance shows, but it wasn’t like modern stripping or pole dancing. It was all about the legs, not the breasts. Obviously, no one left any written reports about what they saw at the dirty club, so photos were helpful. I found all these photos of women wearing these crazy Xena: Warrior Princess outfits with breastplates, horses' heads, Cupid’s bows and arrows – costumes with a real sense of fun to them.
DB: Blanche does seem to be quite sexually liberated considering the book's set in 19876!
ED: When I knew I was going to be writing about a prostitute, I didn’t want to make her a grim, brutalised unhappy one. I was reading up on the working classes, and they had all these ideas of free love and humanism. In America in the 1880s, a woman ran for president. Her campaign was all about free love and not wanting to be tied down. A lot of these wacky, new ideas were circulating then.
DB: How did you find writing all the graphic scenes?
ED: It’s not easy. I sweated over it, because when sex scenes are done badly or in a limp way, it can be terrible. I did put a disproportionate amount of time into writing those scenes.
DB: Any tips?
ED: I just try and stay very intensely in the point of view of whoever my main character is. You need to stay in the head, and therefore the body, of one person. The trickiest aspect is that Blanche is a bit of a masochist, and I think that is really common these days. What I’ve read about s&m clubs is everyone is wandering round going, ‘I’m a bottom, are there any tops here?’ People want to be dominated and submissive, just look at the success of Fifty Shades Of Grey.
DB: Room was the big success of your career so far. Was it easier to write Frog Music afterwards, or did you feel more pressure?
ED didn’t feel any pressure, no. For me, writing is all about the sheer level of excitement of the new project. Room was such a one-off, strange story that I couldn’t possibly have copied it. I am now working on the film adaptation of Room, though.
DB: Do you have any actors cast yet?
ED: Not yet, but very soon.
DB: Can you pass on any wisdom for young women wanting to break into writing?
ED: Publishers never know what is going to sell. Some of the most satisfying moments in my life have been when I’ve had a book that nobody wanted and then it turns out to be desirable. When I wrote my novel Slammerkin, my publisher at the time dumped me. But then two other publishers bought it and it was my bestseller! Also, never try to follow literary fashion because by the time you’ve written and published the book, the trends will have changed.
DB: And what’s on your reading list at the moment?
ED: A fantastic book called The Bees – it is sort of like The Hunger Games, but set in a beehive, where one rebel bee has an egg, which only the Queen is meant to do. It’s totally thrilling and it is written in a really visceral way. It is full of smells, because bees communicate through smell. It’s by Laline Paull.
Frog Music is out now.
Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.