Johannesburg
You can hear Fiona talking about Johannesburg here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08ymybw
6 December 2013. Johannesburg.
Gin has returned home from New York to throw a party for her mother's eightieth birthday; a few blocks away, at the Residence, Nelson Mandela's family prepares to announce Tata Mandela's death...
So begins Johannesburg, Fiona Melrose's searing second novel. Responsive to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, the story follows a polyphonic course across a single day, culminating in a party and traces the fractures and connections of the city.
An irascible mother, a daughter trying to negotiate her birthplace and the people from her past, a homeless hunchback who takes his fight for justice to the doors of a mining company, a mining magnate, a man still haunted by his first love, the domestic workers who serve this cast and populate the neighbourhood, a troubled novelist called Virginia - these are the characters who give voice to the city on a day hot with nerves and tension and history.
Johannesburg is a profound hymn to an extraordinary city, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on love.
Praise for Johannesburg
Woolf produced blooms that are impossible to emulate. Johannesburg provides evidence of a novelist who can grow inimitable flowers herself. (Spectator)
With Johannesburg, Melrose enters a widely travelled literary territory and makes it her own. It is a fine novel and Melrose is fast on her way to establishing herself as one of the most fascinating, versatile novelists of our time. (Cape Times)
An ambitious, beautifully written novel that seems to sing. (Sarra Manning Red)
The pages fly by. Clearly written from the heart, in it we can find much of our own lives, regardless of the setting. Melrose paints the city beautifully, full of grace, colour and even fear. (Belfast Telegraph)
Delicate yet devastating . . . Melrose beautifully captures the simmering, shimmering city and the vivid characters that walk its tense streets. (Psychologies Magazine)
Beautifully observed . . . Together, these varied voices bear witness to the experience of living in a complicated city. (Mail on Sunday)
An assured homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway... No mean feat, it's also an insightful portrait of a city and country grappling with demons past and present. (Emerald Street)
[Fiona Melrose] pulls off a stream-of-consciousness success, following a single day in the South African capital through the eyes of everyone from an expat artist to a homeless hunchback. Kudos. (Sunday Telegraph)
Melrose can undoubtedly write . . . what emerges is her original depiction of modern Johannesburg - a beautiful, violent, unforgiving place that is a social reality and a state of mind. (Daily Mail)