Emma Donoghue Meet the Author

breakthrough. Now on BBC News it's time for Meet

the Author with Nick Higham. Four years ago, Emma Donoghue

published a novel about the world seen through the eyes of a

five`year`old can find to a single room with its mother. Now she has

written a dense and atmospheric historical novel and murder mystery

set in France and `` set in San Francisco. The unsolved murder of a

young Frenchwoman. Who was Jenny Wester Mark `` Jenny? She was a

professional frog catcher. She wore trousers and for wearing trousers

she was the approximately once a month. She was a playful, fun loving

Becker of bar fights and she got shot dead through a window. She is

slightly more than someone who wears trousers for work. She is determined

cross`dresser and one of the things that appeals to hide is that it went

people up. She is about the only person in the city that they used

this law against. I'm time she would say, do you want me to go naked? She

was quite a celebrity. What drew you to her as a subject? She seemed to

me the perfect murder victim. She lived as if she knew she was going

to die at 27. She made very odd decisions. She was a Shepherd and

moved on to becoming a frog catcher and she befriended other people of

French origin in San Francis, including prostitutes and pimps ``

San Francisco. She cross`dressed in a playful way, not trying to

disguise herself, but in a maverick way. Some of your central characters

are those prostitutes and pimps, one is an exotic dancer, there is for

him and lover `` her pimp. How important is the research? How much

of the attraction of this is being able to do this research? It is

crucial to do it and to throw it away. It is almost homoeopathic. You

have to absorb yourself in so many so horses, `` in so many sources and

get rid of anything that you do not feel his place on your page. You do

not have to give paragraphs of explanation. You have to think,

would my character care? You have the character who says news is a

crazy equal to fact and fiction. That is a description of the book.

It is, but it has been carefully pieced together. I care desperately

about who pulled the trigger and I love getting to moments where the

facts run out and I have to invent. By inventing, what can you bring to

it? I greater truth of the spirit, meaning that I do not have the

letter of what happened but I can communicate what it felt like to be

there. I think I can bring the issues of the day lives in a way

that is very difficult to do with a has any. There was a smallpox

epidemic, a heatwave, you have a city that has grown out of nothing,

one of the devices you use to try to capture the character of the time is

to reference popular songs, all through the book there are snatches

of popular songs, lullabies, musical songs.

MUSIC The drawback for me of that is that you get to read the words but

you do not hear the tunes on the page. I've found it a bit

frustrating. I know what you mean. There is no music but the words lead

you towards those songs. By the audio book. That contains a lot of

the songs. I have provided a playlist. Books often lead you off

in other directions, supplementary information or media, so that is one

of the ways in which this book will take readers on a journey that goes

beyond the page. Was that part of your thinking, to take it into other

media, there could be something online? Yes. On my website I provide

an exhaustive bibliography of the sources try to work out what really

happened on that night. I think readers who have interests in more

music or more fact will follow the book in other directions. It has to

work on the page. I find the lyrics of the folk music tradition so

evocative. I love how do they were passed on and changed with every

repetition. I think there is a lot of suggestive atmosphere to the

lyrics. I agree they are not stop. This is a return to many of the

books you use to write. Before you produce this extraordinary book four

years ago which was acclaimed, and it is very different, it has a basis

in fact, but it is not like most of your fiction. Was it difficult after

the success of that to continue? No, I could not care lies. My publishers

used to ask for more historical. You can never tell what is going to

sell. I had planned this about 15 years ago and I was waiting for time

to write it. I write for my own pleasure. I will always excite

between the contemporary and their historical because I do not be a

difference between them. It would be a shame to stick to one area the

same as it would be ashamed to to your own country. `` E shame.