Johannesburg

by Fiona Melrose

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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Africa, South Africa, Historical Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2017

About the author

Fiona Melrose was born in Johannesburg but has spent the majority of her adult life in the UK, first in London and then in East Anglia. She moved to Suffolk to concentrate on her writing and it is there that Midwinter was conceived. Previously Fiona has worked in academia, NGO's, public affairs and as an emerging markets analyst. She continues to keep a foot in both continents and is currently spending the majority of her time back in South Africa where she is completing her second novel.

Reviews

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bailed on page 40. Sadly, Second Novel Syndrome hobbles this, after Melrose’s wonderful debut Midwinter last year in which the prose flowed like water and the characters leapt off the page. Here the writing does not sing and the characters refuse to dance.

[shakespeareandspice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Johannesburg is set in Johannesburg, South Africa and follows a cast of characters as they go about their day on December 6, 2013—the day Tata Mandela died.

Having enjoyed Melrose’s debut novel, Midwinter , I was even more eager for Johannesburg seeing as how it’s inspired by one of my favorite classic novelists. While Melrose’s wonderful writing more then exceed my expectations, the novel did fall short of a few things.

Unlike Mrs. Dalloway, Johannesburg doesn’t have the fluidity of thought that made Mrs. Dalloway unique. Not only did having too many characters hinder my connection to all of them but the breaks between each of their narratives happened far too abruptly. Every time I finally settled into a character’s mindset, I felt annoyance at having to switch again in just a few paragraphs. Some characters we meet, like Gin or Dudu, had a particularly strong presence and I would’ve been more happy just reading from their perspective instead of switching to some of the less interesting ones like Peter (who was frankly as exhausting as the Peter we see in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway).

The novel’s strength lies in it’s language entirely. Johannesburg is written through beautiful, carefully crafted passages such as,

“Frangipani, clusters of sugary stars, so clean and waxy it was if they had been cut from sheets of confectioners icing. Gin touched a single petal. They were real. They were high above her so that she had to strict up through the pointed leaves and the noble branches to reach a stem. She had brought paper with her, knowing that as she cut the stem they would hemorrhage their milk in torrents. Blinking against the sun, trying not to lose a single flower from the spray, she cut. The milk flowed, it dipped along her hand and down her wrist and round like the cut of a blade. It burned her skin. A beautiful blood-pact with the garden.

Mother’s milk.”

“Dudu liked the walk with her mother and the other women. There was laughing and talking, and sometimes she and the other smaller girls could glimpse the world of secret womanhood. To be a woman it seemed, was to understand so much more of the world through your body, your fibre, and know everything that existed both before and after you. Her hips were her mother’s hips and her grandmother’s and all the mothers before them too. Her hips were wide so that she could carry the full weight, the heritage of her female ancestors, the weight of their sorrow, their joy, their creation. Her hips said, I am strong, I can carry all of the wisdom of all the thousands of women who came before me and make safe the path for all my daughters still to come.”

In the end, I didn’t love this book but I did really enjoy reading it; it felt like a true treat. And Melrose’s ability to sketch a stunning imagery with such language is the sole reason for why I will continue reading anything she publishes in the future.

Disclaimer: I received this e-book from NetGalley in exchange for a review. All opinions stated are my own and not influenced by the exchange.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not convinced about the Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway in particular) allusions in this, as it seems a literary trend at the moment for writers to go all meta on Woolf. Blame Michael Cunningham, I suppose.

What I particularly liked about Fiona Melrose’s book is how it casts an oblique fictional eye on such a pivotal recent moment in South African history: The death of Nelson Mandela.

Given the tortuous path that our politics and economy have taken since then, there is a certain element of nostalgia and stasis to Melrose’s account.

It is one of those historical turning points where we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news.

Add in a side narrative about a homeless cripple who was a Marikana survivor (Melrose uses fictional names for both events and companies in this), protesting outside the culpable mining house’s head office.

I did kind of scratch my head at the logistics of him walking from the Johannesburg CBD to Houghton; the devil is in the detail, especially when you live in the city the writer is describing.

And then there is the daughter-in-exile, returning from London to host her ageing mother’s 80th birthday party – but discovering how adrift she really is in her life. Oh, and a missing dog.

It all sounds frightfully depressing, which I’m sure Woolf would have approved of, but there is a wonderful resoluteness here that builds to a truly transcendent ending. As Melrose states, all that matters in the end are hope and beauty. Only with these two qualities can life be bearable.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last year I read Fiona Melrose’s first book ‘Midwinter’. I loved that book, so when I received a review request for Fiona’s new book ‘Johannesburg’ I knew I wanted to read this book. And don’t you just love the cover of Fiona Melrose’s book?! I think they are magnificent.

‘Johannesburg’ takes place at December 6th 2013 and is centered around the lives of several different characters. Why December 6th? On that day Nelson Mandela's family prepares to announce Tata Mandela's death. And in Johannesburg we read about the moments in a view persons lives.

Well, I finished reading this book over a week ago and somehow I just wasn’t able to write this review earlier. I always try to write my reviews as soon as I finish a book, but with this one I just couldn’t. Since I loved ‘Midwinter’ I really hoped to love ‘Johannesburg’ as much, but I didn’t. Not because the writing was bad or something. No Fiona Melrose’s writing was just as good in this book, as in her first. But I just couldn’t connect to all the different characters.

In ‘Johannesburg’ we read about the life of several characters. And just like I always do, I had a lot of trouble separating all the different characters, especially in the beginning. I re-started reading this book two times, but still I found it hard to keep everyone apart. And in the end I just couldn’t connect to all the characters as much as I would have liked.

This book was definitely a nice read, but not as great as I would have liked.

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to be writing a lot about rewrites these days. Fiona Melrose’s second novel, Johannesburg, isn’t precisely a rewrite, but it takes many of its cues from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: from its life-in-the-day scope to its characters (Melrose’s hunchbacked, homeless protestor September mirroring Woolf’s shellshocked, suicidal Septimus) to its culmination in a grand party. These knowing echoes, and others like them, don’t always work, but when they do, Melrose achieves what Woolf does: she creates a portrait of a city, and of particular moments in time, and reminds us that a moment can contain an eternity.

We start with Gin, an unmarried fine artist in her early forties who has come home to Johannesburg from New York to throw a birthday party for her eighty-year-old mother, Neve. Neve has never apparently approved of anything Gin has done, and the party – as such parties do – has taken on a major weight of significance in Gin’s mind: if Neve likes it, sees that she has worked hard to make it look beautiful and get the details right, then that will prove, once and for all, that her mother loves her. Preparations for the party throughout the day take up much of the book’s matter, though Melrose lets us spend less time picking up food or cutting flowers, and much more time inside Gin’s head, as she worries ceaselessly about being a woman, behaving like a woman, disappointing her mother, having her own space to create.

That obsession – having one’s own space to create – is deeply Woolfian, and should give some hint as to what this contemporary Dalloway is trying to achieve. Woolf is famous for ignoring the servants and working-class women that enable her life and the lives of her creative female characters, but Melrose doesn’t make that mistake: she accords to Mercy and to Duduzile, a housekeeper and a cook/maid, the same longing for agency and independence as she gives to Gin (and to Gin’s now-dead Aunt Virginia, a novelist who drowned herself on her eightieth birthday, all of which I think is slightly too heavy-handed). Still, Mercy has her own thoughts – most of them, fortunately, not about the white family she works for – and, at one point, wonders what kind of cooking she could do if she had a little kitchen that was all her own. It’s a long-awaited way of moving Woolf’s famous “room of one’s own” into the realm of a working-class woman; Mercy thinks she’d buy a table and paint it red, hang her own curtains, cook fritters and pap to sell to stalls all over the city.

Duduzile, meanwhile, is tethered to responsibility by her brother September, a hunchbacked man who used to work as a cook in the kitchens of a large mining company, until the miners staged a demonstration for better pay and conditions. This demo, at Verloren, turned into a massacre, and September – one of the few survivors – was grazed by a bullet that ploughed a furrow through the side of his head. Now, homeless and misshapen, he is animated by the need for justice: every day, he takes up vigil outside the Diamond, the urban headquarters of the mining company, with a placard strapped to his back above his hump: VERLOREN. HERE I AM. Dudu brings him meat and fruit and water, and tries to make sure he gets enough rest; he sleeps on cardboard in an abandoned garden, since living with Dudu is impossible (he reflects that he would frighten her “madam”, and the madam’s children.)

September is the moral heart of the novel. His stand outside the Diamond is only the most obvious instance; throughout the book he represents a silent majority who have been mistreated and underestimated, but who, nevertheless, demand justice and show love. The book takes place on the day that Nelson Mandela’s death is announced, and throughout the narrative is woven a sense of the people of Johannesburg hurrying to the Residence to pay their respects and show their grief. Extra police officers and helicopters are deployed to “keep the peace”, which September views as an insult: South Africans love Mandela; to suggest that they might degenerate into violence upon his death is offensive. His presence in the book serves as a mute instance of passive resistance, a technique that has fallen in and out of favour with political activists (particularly Black activists, both in Africa and in the States), but which nevertheless has a long and distinguished pedigree. HERE I AM.

September’s outstanding act in the book is to return Neve’s runaway dog, Juno, thereby salvaging Neve’s mood and Gin’s planned party. He doesn’t hang around for long enough to receive the cash reward that Gin wants to give him; when she returns to the front door with her wallet, he’s already walking away. Later (no spoiler, this, if you’ve read Dalloway) September is killed outside the Diamond in a standoff-cum-misunderstanding-cum-suicide by cop, a tragedy which Gin’s former lover Peter is helpless to prevent. When Gin hears the news, and realises that the dead man is the very man who brought her dog back (and saved the evening by restoring Neve’s good mood), she is horrified to realise that when he left her door, he was walking to his death. Up to this point in the book, very little has been able to get through Gin’s carapace of self-pity, shame, and fascination with mortality; it is only the actual death of a person she saw mere hours before that shakes her. Here Melrose both hews closely to Woolf’s original – where Clarissa Dalloway is upset by news of Septimus’s suicide – and writes with a broader social awareness than Woolf manages. Gin, death-obsessed, is a well-off white woman with every conceivable liberty – artistic, financial, romantic. When death does enter the novel, it doesn’t come for her, but for a poor, crippled black man; she is forced to decentralise herself, to understand that while she may see death as “an option”, for others it is so much more.

There are some missteps: the story of Aunt Virginia, for instance, who doesn’t contribute much to the narrative other than a way for the reader to nod knowingly, and some of the dialogue between Gin and Neve, which is probably meant to be painfully adolescent but possibly not meant to be quite so annoying and banal. Ultimately, though, Mrs. Dalloway and Johannesburg are both – at least through Melrose’s lens – about a particular city, and what it is like to live there, and how the city becomes more than the sum of its parts. The scenes in Johannesburg where Gin drives through town – always driving, always separated from the street and the noise and the heat – are intelligent counterpoints to September’s view of the overlapping freeways that soar above his traffic island. Both characters feel embedded in the city; neither sees it whole. In that fragmentation, combined with the sense of unity provided by communal grief at Mandela’s death, Johannesburg rings wonderfully true.

Many thanks to the kind folk at Corsair for the review copy. Johannesburg was published in the UK on 3 August. This review originally appeared on my blog, Elle Thinks

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

ARC from Netgally.

This novel brings together the stories of a number of residents or former residents of Johannesburg, telling about each of their lives through detailed description of their activities and thoughts throughout the day and through flashbacks to previous events in their lives. In the first few chapters, a lot of characters are introduced very quickly, many of whom seem to have little relationship to each other, but eventually all their tales are pulled in to intersect.

The writing is good but I found many of the characters lacking spirit. Gin and her mother are the products of two generations with differing ideas of what defines success. I think more should have been made more of the maids, Mercy and Dudu. September was the most interesting character to me: he has some mental health issues as the result of an injury sustained in a union riot as well as a birth defect. The relationship between him and his sister, Dudu, is touching. Peter, Gin's ex who still pines for her, is simply tedious and I, like Gin, just wished he go away. And Juno - well, Juno is the dog, and part of the story is told from Juno's perspective; I personally found this twee and childish, and not in keeping with the literary tone of the rest of the novel.

The connections between the various characters' plot-lines are mostly incidental, rather than each triggering events in the lives of the others. There is no one main plot or one main character, so the story seems to lack a certain focus. I felt as though I'd been circling around a series of short stories. Although all of the events occur on the day of Mandela's death, very little, if any, of the plot relies on that. Apart from the many references to characters hearing the news on the radio, or having fleeting thoughts about Mandela, all of the stories could have happened on any day.

I think I'd have preferred to read a book in which these characters' stories were told in a more substantial way with more examination of the events in their lives, less on their rambling thoughts and less of the mundane details (do we really need, for example, an entire paragraph about the hotel toiletries in the shower?)

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This compelling and ultimately tragic novel takes place over one day in contemporary Johannesburg in 2013, the day on which Nelson Mandela’s death was announced. Through the experiences of a disparate group of characters – a lawyer, domestic staff, a homeless man, and Gin and her mother – we see a portrait of a city and its divided community and explore the vast gulf that still exists between rich and poor in post-apartheid South Africa. Gin has returned from New York to mark her mother's 80th birthday and is preoccupied with preparations for the party. As tension mounts for the celebration, tension also mounts with the arrival of mourners at Mandela’s house, just up the road, and with the wanderings of September, the homeless man, as he continues with his mission to demand justice for the shooting of miners in an earlier incident. All these strands are brought together in a bleak and heart-breaking story that I found thought-provoking, moving and always engaging.
I’ve seen many references to Mrs Dalloway as the inspiration for this book, but I don’t get it. Apart from the fact that it’s set on a single day and involves a party, the focus isn’t on a single protagonist but incorporates a range of characters and experiences. I feel the comparison is somewhat misleading and that this excellent novel needs no referral back to Woolf.

[L'atelier de Litote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un espace-temps court pour ce roman intimiste, tout se joue en 24 heures à Johannesburg, une triste journée que celle du 6 décembre 2013, puisqu’elle coïncide avec la mort du remarquable Mandela. Pourtant c’est bien une fête qui se prépare, l’anniversaire de la mère de Gin. Gin est revenu spécialement de New York pour les quatre-vingts ans de sa mère. Nous allons suivre plusieurs personnages tous bien différents, qu’ils soient noirs, blancs, pauvres ou riches. Le personnage de September est terriblement poignant et l’auteur a su me le rendre inoubliable. Toutes ces vies livrent à nos yeux, leurs douleurs, leurs peurs, leurs mémoires et leurs secrets. Plus on avance dans l’histoire plus l’atmosphère se fait lourde et pesante. Ente la mère et la fille, je dirai que rien ne va plus mais l’incompréhension, cela remonte à loin. Même si Gin mettra tout son cœur à la préparation de cette fête, elle sait déjà qu’elle ne comblera pas sa mère. Cette journée ne sera pas vécue par tous de la même façon, certains se préoccuperont de célébrer l’anniversaire alors que d’autres rendront hommage au grand homme. J’ai ressentie cette plongée dans la ville de Johannesburg comme dans une ville pleine de vie, on peut presque sentir son effervescence, une ville chamarrée avec ses différentes ethnies, une ville dangereuse avec ce perpétuel bouillonnement de violence. L’écriture de l’auteure est riche, elle n’hésite pas à nous donner du vocabulaire ethnique et on voit toutes les tensions qu’il peut y avoir à vivre ainsi, ensemble en côtoyant de multiples ethnies. Rien n’est simple lorsque l’on aborde le thème de l’identité, de l’inégalité mais cela même apporte du sens à la vie. Je ne pourrai en rien capter les subtilités de l’hommage rendu à Virginia Woolf par l’auteure car, je n’ai pas encore lu « Miss Dalloway » mais cela ne gène en rien la compréhension du récit et en plus maintenant, je sais que ce livre rejoindra rapidement ma Pal. Bonne lecture.

[Bev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gin returns to Johannesburg from New York to hold a birthday party for her 80 year old mother. Her timing is perfect - she returns on the day that Nelson Mandela's death is announced, and the nation starts pouring out its grief, its pain and also celebrating with many wreaths, flowers, candles and pilgrimages his wonderful life and inspiring legacy.

It's a party, and of course we meet cantankerous Mrs. Brandt. But also Mercy, the domestic helper, and Dudu her friend. September, the miner from Marikana, Peter, Gin's ex, and Juno - the family pet - all feature.

Set on this single momentous day in Johannesburg Gin's past and future, her supporters and detractors, her family with all its faults collide, and no one is the same after that.

Read my full review here.

[Juli Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never thought that moving to China to teach English would mean that my circle of new friends would be almost entirely made up off South Africans. Thankfully thye're utterly lovely people, and getting to know them has also made me more curious about South Africa and its history. We all know Nelson Mandela and now, thanks to the Daily Show, we also know Trevor Noah, but its history and culture were still unknown to me. So when I saw Johannesburg I jumped at the chance to get a sense of this amazing city. Thanks to Corsair and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Whether it's James Joyce's Ulysses or Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of Vanities, many authors have used fiction to immortalise their cities, to show us the streets they so love or that particular way the light has of hitting the roofs. It's difficult to truly encompass everything a city has to offer in a novel without the author coming across as a tour guide, but Melrose finds a way. Rather than wax lyrical about different buildings or streets, she aims to show the lives lived in Johannesburg. In a way Melrose makes the reader a bird flying over the city, landing here and there before flying off to visit someone else. It gives Johannesburg a distinctly poetic and lyrical quality, both achingly immediate and oddly removed. You have to mine some of the passages for their meaning, consider what it is Melrose is actively trying to tell you, but this effort is worth it in the end.

Melrose has a talent for describing a larger scene and then zooming in on a surprising detail. A clear example of this is the style of the novel. Most of Johannesburg is written in third person, allowing the reader to both get close to the characters while maintaining something of a distance. Occasionally, however, Melrose dips into a first-person narrative to share her characters' most intimate fears and thoughts. It was towards the end I truly started to understand Johannesburg as an 'homage to Virginia Woold's Mrs. Dalloway'. Melrose lets her characters' thoughts ramble in a way that initially seems odd. I mean, why dedicate so much time to things that are seemingly pointless? It isn't until later, when the reader has spent more time with the characters, that this writing pays off because we can see what it is these characters obsess about, can't help but think about and even prefer not to think about. Many things are hinted at but not really developed and at the end of the novel you don;t necessarily know much more about any of the characters. The ending is not typical and may leave some readers a bit unsatisfied, but I enjoyed the elegiac nature of it.

Reading Johannesburg was a very interesting experience. Melrose shows you the day in the lives of many different people and rather than pass judgement or explain, she leaves it to the reader to draw their own conclusions. Her love for Johannesburg shines through, however, and that is the real heart and soul of the novel.


For full review: http://universeinwords.blogspot.com/2...

[Rhiannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some beautifully evocative moments but overall this book doesn’t quite work. I think the author tried to do too much: Mrs Dalloway + Madiba’s death + Johannesburg from every echelon of society + Marikana. I wasn’t fully convinced by any of the characters but I did feel that something of Johannesburg (Houghton anyway) was captured well.

[Geri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johannesburg is set over one day in the titular city: the day that Nelson Mandela's death is announced. The book explores the impact of the man and his death on several of the city's residents. It is the story of Gin, recently returned from New York to host a party for her 80 year old mother's birthday. It is also the story of this mother, Neve, and the story of her domestic help, Mercy. Juno, Neve's dog, also has a story line in here. The book opens with another of the characters whose story is followed over the day: September, homeless, disabled and damaged physically and mentally by having been shot in a workers' rights demonstration. HIs sister, Dudu, is another important character in the tale and finally there is Peter, white liberal lawyer. The characters are well constructed and the tales are well balanced. The day in Johannesburg looks realistically at contemporary South Africa and the legacy of apartheid. The reader is taken inside the heads of all the characters, including Juno, the dog - we read of their hopes, fears and rationalisations for action. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and on the strength of reading it will now seek out Fiona Melrose's first novel, Midwinter.
What I have written above is a review of Johannesburg on the surface level. However it was not possible to avoid the fact that the book had been written as a homage to Virginia Woolf, in particular to her novel Mrs Dalloway. As such it is a beautifully written contemporary reworking, in structure, plot and characters. It is not necessary to know Mrs Dalloway to appreciate Johannesburg but a reading of the former will further enhance appreciation of the latter and of the author's success in her homage. This homage goes further than Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and there is much to recognise in Johannesburg taken from the ideas in Woolf's A Room of One's Own. A lovely book overall which will merit re-reading.
I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been a long time since I read Mrs Dalloway (or indeed anything else by Woolf), and I think this was an advantage. The structure and the broad plot is obviously recognisable but I didn’t find myself doing a like-by-like comparison, just accepted it as an interesting structure to riff off.
Loved not just the obvious intertextuality (waves/sea, a matrilineal society, room of one’s own imagery...) but also the integration of current events and culture (eg the reference to Hugh masekela who, like Gin, moved to the US and was sad the day he woke and realised he no longer dreamt in Zulu).
The way the city Johannesburg is treated is really interesting: hope for the future and a “relentless rush to rebirth” juxtaposed with all the solidity of “overstretched and fraying tent settlement ropes in the heat of the afternoon storm”, a city whose very plates have begun to fracture due to mining activity. Johannesburg is seen from the opposing perspectives of Gin (from inside, from above) and September (from outside, from below, and always in suffocating heat). It is a city of energy and enterprise, not a city of beauty and grace.
I felt it was also a book you can really “hear” (helicopters, dogs in kitchen floor...) which made it come to life all the more. It was also intensely physical (Gin’s body “feeling the weight of the journey”, her body “still demanding a sleep cycle attached to other countries” and of course September who is both limited by his physicality and has an intuition that rises above it).
A lot of layers here and a book that will sit on my “to re-read” pile as there feels like more to discover....

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Johannesburg is vibrant, suffocating and stunning. I absolutely relished this book. The way Fiona Melrose writes is so beautifully embellished that you could easily call it poetry. When reading this novel you’re immediately transported to the harsh and hectic city of Johannesburg, a world like no other. As the day unfolds you can literally feel the searing heat and the energetic buzz of life around you.

For me, one character in particular stole the show. I adored sweet, kind, brave September; who knew so much about life, death and everything in between. The warrior September who fought so passionately for his cause and saw everybody for the quality of their soul. I also loved the few passages depicting the wild spirited Aunt Virginia.

Johannesburg is a fearless ode to raw emotion, it gives tangible life to our inner worlds and explores the important role that human connection - or lack of it - plays in our lives. It’s leaves us with the message that our own personal stories are all woven together, sometimes in the most unfathomable ways.

[Sylvie · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are times when an author's writings can become so all pervading that it inspires and permeates what we write. I imagine this to be the case here. Such is the influence of Virginia Woolf over Fiona Melrose: it is subtle enough to let the novel breathe freely. I felt an affinity as I read, and was vaguely reminded of "Mrs Dalloway", without being too caught up in drawing parallels. The only parallel is in the way they differ, if that does not sound too much of a contradiction. Just to cite a few instances, the flowers from an English garden are as beautiful, but have not the almost full-blown decadent extravagance of those in a South African one. The rumble in the background of WWII and its effects on the psyche in "Mrs. Dalloway" are in this novel like the everyday menace of life in Johannesburg; of the armed guards who stand in front of the mine offices; of the death of Nelson Mandela, which brings people of all backgrounds together but also underlines the stark differences that still remain. How far we are in the searing heat of Johannesburg from the fairly sedate English setting and climate of Mrs D

Now that this superfluous comparison is out of the way, to the novel itself.

"Johannesburg" is set over one day, the day that Nelson Mandela's death is announced. The story pivots round Gin (Virginia), who has returned from New York to organise her mother Neve’s 80th birthday party. As an artist, she has an eye for the effect it will create; as an independent woman she is used to being in charge. There is an undercurrent here of guilt, because the mother-daughter relationship has always been fraught. Here we have clashing points of view, on the one hand the mother and society (especially South African society) expecting a woman to marry and have children, and on the other hand Gin’s self-sufficiency and belief in herself. Neve denigrates her daughter’s ability to cook or even prepare a proper dinner spread, and moreover is reluctant to take part in her own birthday party. All she would like is to be left alone with her beloved dog Juno, who in her innocence plays an important role in the interaction between the characters and in the plot itself.

Another strand in the novel is the story of September, a man with a twisted spine, whose face was half shot away by a guard when he took part in a mine workers' rights demonstration. He sleeps in “his garden”, which is nothing but an overgrown plot belonging to a derelict house in the city. He has a placard protesting against the Verloren shooting of miners, which he shoulders with difficulty every day to stand in silent protest in front of the mine offices. His sister Dudu brings him food and comfort. She cannot offer him a home because she works as a servant in a big house.

In the mine offices the repercussions of the Verloren shootings still remain to be resolved (and we suspect, suppressed). Legal advice is the province of Peter, a liberal minded lawyer who is still in love with Gin and would like to renew their relatioship.

Here is writing which gets into the very soul of the city with its noises and heat, with its sense of danger. Gin is aware of the presence of death confronting the self, which as an artist she has visualised in her own art installation, which acts as a symbolic image on many levels:

She knew the precise weight of all her bones. She had remade them all for her exhibition, “Sticks and Stones”. Every bone in her body, the fingerbones like chicken wings, the femur, her pelvis, remade, cast to their exact weight and size, then hung like totems from the gallery ceiling. The same set of bones repeated on and on until they began to form a recognizable shape and eventually a skeleton, her sleleton. Depending on which way the visitors entered the long lab-lit space, they either experienced coming together to wholeness or shattering to the stars as they moved along. She wanted people to understand that depending on their perspective, the point of entry into her world, they would either view her, all of her, as working towards integrity or strength or alternately, soon likely to disintegrate competely.

The atmosphere of the city, haunted by the presence of its past, comes through in Gin’s very thoughts and sentiments:

....women who walked to and from the taxis along dark tree shaded streets, children left alone for lack of anyone else to watch over them, all of this contained the kernel of the ultimate violence. The vacant threat that was licking its teeth behind every door.

For Gin it was a place too. The denial of death by replacing it with near permanent newness. Johannesburg was a relentless rush to rebirth and rebuild so that in the end it was built on a pile of bones. Each year another layer was added. Other people’s lives, their great and pitiful histories, were piled deep beneath the incandescence of commerce.

Why was she surprised? The entire city was meant to be a temprorary shelter for those in search of gold.

And what could be more disturbing or profound than what is lurking inside Spetember. It is as of he’s the very embodiment of the sickness beneath the veneer.

And today, which accounted for the difficullty he was having, it seemed to come from his heart. He had been troubled of dreams from happier times and this had left him broken not only in his physical body but the one beyond that too, the body of his soul that held the paths to all his ancestors and all his yesterdays, had now, he believed also begun to tatter. The pain that registered there was often so much worse than any bullet or twisted spiine. For there is no other line of defence for a man once his soul begins to rent and fray.

I felt this was a novel to enjoy, for the beauty of the prose and the deep empathy which flowed from it.

[Jude · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice book to read. But I think it tries too hard to fit into one day in Joburg. The characters don't com together, and the author tries perhaps too hard to be politically correct. Some of the prose is evocative and powerful, mostly when the narrative is focused through September. But what was the point about Juno the dog? And do we really feel that we know and understand Gin's agonising by the end of the novel? Peter is annoying and Richard incidental. The depiction of September and his sister Dudu saves it from mediocrity.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard on the heels of my reading of Jane Caro's Accidental Feminists, comes an exploration of a mother-and-daughter relationship that exemplifies Caro's association of feminism with occasional inter-generational friction. When mother-daughter expectations about gender roles diverge, there can sometimes be mutual disappointment.

In Fiona Melrose's novel Johannesburg (2017) the central character Gin spends more time thinking about her role as a creative artist and a writer, than she does organising an important birthday party for her elderly mother. She is trying—and failing—to be a dutiful daughter, with a mother who doesn't understand her ambition. Since Gin doesn't think the domestic arts are important, her mother expects the party to be a debacle and her response is unkind and discouraging. But there are two sides to this coin: Gin's choices impact on her mother — who had no choice in them at all.

Would her mother be kinder if Gin had simply complied, married some local man, set up a house, spent her days choosing soft furnishings, teaching art at the local primary school? Gin had a sense that this would have allowed her mother to settle into some sense of comfort, achievement, objective standard by which she could announce her own parenting, and her daughter's life, a success. Instead Gin had asked her mother to navigate an alien set of credentials. Difficult to quantify, impossible to justify when all around were simply toeing the line. By refusing to conform, Gin had forced her mother to do the same. She had forced her to defend something she didn't believe in. (p.104)

Johannesburg is a contemporary reworking of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, set on a single day in Johannesburg on the day that the death of Nelson Mandela was announced in December 2013. Gin (Virginia) has returned from her work as an artist to spend the day preparing for her mother Neve Brandt's 80th birthday party. Narrated in chorus of voices, the novel brings characters together across a colour and class divide that still persists in the New South Africa. It's a satisfying book that richly rewards attention to narrative strands that don't at first seem connected. (Pay attention to the dog Juno: Juno was the Roman goddess who protected the nation as a whole but also kept special watch over all aspects of women's lives!)

Death stalks the novel: Gin's wild adolescence in a lawless post-apartheid city, makes her preoccupied by death.

They were rainbow nights for the new Rainbow Nation, lawless and blood-full, so that all four chambers of her heart raged in unison. After dominating her childhood, it seemed as if the police were all but gone. While violent crime played out in suburbs and townships across the city in a way that made Gin fear her own breath in the dark. And there was no one there to save her, not her parents, not her friends. Certainly not [her unwanted suitor] Peter. So she embraced it. The whole city was an accident of death. This one was in the wrong place, that one, his time was up. A roll of the dice. Wrong house, wrong petrol station, wrong time and your day was done. Death was everywhere and came in every form. Just to be alive was dangerous and to survive a defiance. (p.65-6)

The irony is that privileged white people like Gin are still not in the same sort of peril as the black underclass, and she doesn't realise that until late in the novel.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/20/j...

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very touching look at South Africa. It is not a glorified view post-Apartheid where the streets are paved with opportunity and fairness. Life is still unfair and people, the poorest of the people, are still suffering. But perhaps I am jumping the gun here.

This novel covers one day in South Africa. It is the day Nelson Mandela passed away. As had happened in real life, there were rumours that Mr Mandela had passed days before the news was released, and this concept is covered in the book, both figuratively and literally. It looks at how the standards and qualities that Mr Mandela stood for in reforming the country were already falling apart - had died. Although the book refers to the mass killing of miners as an atrocity at Verloren, the real crisis was at Marikana where more than 30 people were killed and more than 70 injured by police. Verloren is an interesting choice of a name, as it means Lost.

The story also looks at the paradoxical lives of the people in regards to race, politics, love and family. I dare anyone to read this and not identify with at least one relationship in the book, either from their own experience or from seeing it up close in people connected to them.

And I haven't even touched on the connection to Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf which I think should really have been a spoiler, because knowing that allowed me to work out the ending long before it happened. But then, I think I would have worked that out even without the clue. As to being a salute to Woolf, I appreciated how this book was put together and the way it build up to the party or mourning. I think it does Woolf justice.

[Arja Salafranca · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s ambitious to call your novel Johannesburg, for there are as many versions of this city as there are novels about it. And yet it’s what initially attracted me to this book, and to attend a talk at the South African Book Fair titled Johannesburg: A love story last month. With novelist Niq Mhlongo quizzing several writers about their literary and visceral responses to this city they call home, it included Fiona Melrose as well as Ivan Vladislavić and Harry Kalmer. There is no one singular experience of this city – Melrose spoke about how, as a woman, you are necessarily more careful than a man, there are other threats and that, “You move your body differently in the city, depending on whether you have a car or you’re a pedestrian.”

Vladislavić perceptively pointed out that, “Your experience of this place is dependent on money, how much you have, where you’re living – all of this affects the dynamics of living here.” Kalmer added that the city is in constant change, “The city is in constant change. The Yeoville I lived in twenty, thirty years ago is very different to today.”

And so, to Melrose’s novel, Johannesburg, which presents another version of this city I also call home. What also attracted me to this read was that it is set on December 6 2013: it was that evening that it was announced that Mandela had passed on. The days following his death and the country’s mourning remain bright, clear points in memory, iconic moments in history.

This novel is set in Houghton, near to the Mandela residence, (the Residence). It’s a multi-narrative story too, so we follow several characters as they navigate December 6. In homage and a reworking of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, the story is set over a single day, from early morning to night, as preparations for a party are underway.

The novel opens with artist Gin Brandt (Virginia), just home from New York where she lives, having spent nearly two decades there. She’s home to celebrate her mother, Neve’s 80th birthday by throwing her a party, a party the matriarch doesn’t want.

Gin is a stranger to this new Johannesburg: a place where beggars stand at robots, and the landscape changes daily. Her white guilt surges forward as she surveys the scene from her car window: “Gin overtook a wagon and felt the pull of guilt in her stomach. She slowed at the next traffic light and stopped, shaking her head at three men offering pamphlets for cheap ‘leather look’ furniture, sex clinics and a new shoe warehouse, and then the beggar too with his blind friend who shuffled along next to him, guilt bait. A mother with a baby. Another child. So she rolled down the window and dropped some coins from her jacket pocket into the tin cup for the blind man’s friend. And they clattered like gun fire as they fell.”

Gin is calcified by her own demons is not an easy character to like; neither is her mother, equally calcified, wondering at this child of hers – their unease with each other the backbone of their relationship.

Much softer, and more sympathetically drawn are Mercy, the domestic worker in the home, who has been there for years. Also sympathetically drawn is Dudu, a domestic worker in another of the Houghton home. She is a sweet woman burdened by her own guilt and sense of loyalty. And swirling through this vortex is the fully realised character of September, Duduzile’s deformed brother. Duduzile both looks after him, as she has her whole life, and more so after Verloren. In echoes of the Marikana massacre, September was injured in a fictional mining fracas at Verloren. Now dealing not only with his physical disability, but voices and derangement, he begs on a street corner and September makes for an intriguing character. Melrose’s sympathetic and incisive look at him brings him closely to life and evokes our empathy.

There are other voices: there is Peter, the lawyer and Gin’s old beau, still hoping that Gin’s hard exterior might crack and finally let him in. Even the pampered pooch Juni make an appearance and we hear her voice too – which makes for charming writing.

As tensions build, Johannesburg’s stormy weather, with its cloying heat before a storm, runs through the narrative and is a perfect foil to the tension beneath the action. From speculation that Mandela had passed, to Neve and Gin’s discomfort with each other and in themselves, as well as September’s increasingly delusional ravings.

And through it all Melrose paints a portrait of the city, and it is in the many descriptions that Johannesburg springs to life in all its glare. A city that is experienced differently by each character.

As seen by Gin it’s a harsh place that matches her own disappointed, needy mood and character: “Gin could feel a rage building. It needed no origin. … This was a rage that she associated with Johannesburg. She only felt it here. … Johannesburg was the practised master of the endless hustle. It was built on gold. The wheelers, the dealers, the pioneer, frontier town it was always going to be. The drivers, the pedestrians, the constant tap tap tapping on your car window from hawkers and beggars and chancers feigning hunger and destitution and misery, exposed by the headphones and sneakers they wore and by strapping lumps of paper to their backs because a hump means money, and a limp or bent-back sloping shuffle even more. It never changed. The assault of demands.”

Contrast this with a description of September’s: “September had his bread and milk. He stood outside the store and looked up to the sun. The sky began to crease under his gaze. He knew that under it, the city was ripening - its flesh softening and warming. Soon its pulp could be pressed with even the most unwilling thumb. And later, of course, the flies. The king is dead. Long live the king.”

And yet, as the day ends, we come closer to understanding Gin, to feeling sympathy for this woman as events unfold, and the true mourning begins.

Johannesburg is a daring novel, and an intriguing one, playing out a day in the lives of South Africans against the broader panorama of the country’s historical events. And it is also a successful novel – one that invites questions and engagement. At the launch of her novel a few days after the book fair, Melrose commented, “Activism is not without consequence. I’m asking: what is our obligation to the stranger at the gate?”

Whatever the answer, if indeed there is an answer, Johannesburg provides a canvas on which to question and explore it.

Published on https://www.firstrand.co.za/perspecti...

[Elite Group · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiona Melrose’s Johannesburg puts her on the map as one of South Africa’s most captivating novelists.

The story takes place in the colourful city on the day of Nelson Mandela’s death. Gin has arrived from New York to organise her cantankerous mother’s eightieth birthday party. Close by, the Mandela family are about to announce Nelson Mandela’s death. Gin grapples with all that Johannesburg represents for her. Amongst many other things, she needs to juggle the arrival of her ex-boyfriend, the search for the missing dog and the celebration which her mother is resisting.

Melrose writes from the heart and manages to convey her deep, complicated love for both the place and the vibrant characters who work and live in it. Through various eyes; an artist to a hunchback with no home, we experience the day of Mandela’s death in a modern city grappling to keep up with the many changes happening around it.

Melrose writes with deep insight and offers us a glimpse of this beautiful but unforgiving place, which represents so much of the country itself.

I was mesmerised from the first page and will watch out for Fiona Melrose’s next masterpiece!

Gail Gilbride

Author of Under the African Sun

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel, Johannesburg, takes place during a single day, the day of Nelson Mandela's death. This landmark event is not the focus of the novel, but is a constant refrain in the background of all that occurs. The story contains a range of amazing characters, including a highly strung artist, returning from overseas to Johannesburg, the city of her birth, trying to gain favour and recognition from her cantankerous mother; a homeless man who has been a victim of apartheid and is peacefully protesting against the injustices wrought; the homeless man's sister who cares for him as best she can while fulfilling her domestic duties in the home of people who epitomise the colour divide of the apartheid era; and many more. All of the characters are well developed and their emotions and observations so well described that the reader experiences and lives through the events of the day along with each one of them. That which is beautiful and not so beautiful about the city of Johannesburg, its politics and history, form the backdrop of the events that occur. This is a beautifully written novel. Highly recommended. Thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I love about Fiona Melrose’s writing is that she describes everyday things with such exquisite attention to detail. This whole books spans a single day.

Though the day and place this book takes place is anything but extraordinary, Johannesburg on the day Mandela’s death was announced to the world, we follow a cast of characters through a day in their lives. But as they move through the day small events stack upon each other to turn into a day of tragedy.

This novel made me realise how little I know about South Africa. I knew nothing about the events at Marikana that the violent ending of the miners’ strike mentioned in the book is based on. I appreciate it when a book leads me to look to understand a country’s history.

This is not a book that will be for everyone. It’s slow, painstaking in its detail, but for me in that lies its beauty, much like it did in the author’s other book Midwinter. I think she is an incredible writer. I would read anything she writes.

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading Fiona Melrose's Johannesburg as part of my Around the World in 80 Books challenge, but sadly did not feel compelled enough to complete it. It has been inspired by, and written as a response of sorts, to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, a novel which I absolutely love, and which I have read several times. I found Melrose's comparisons and echoes to be too obvious, and also found that there were far too many characters to try and keep track of. The writing was abrupt as it shifted from one character to another in the space of just one or two pages, and nothing quite melded together. A lot of people have mentioned in their reviews that they adored Midwinter but were quite disappointed by Johannesburg, so I am not going to let it put me off reading Melrose's debut.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dived into this book with enthusiasm because it is set in modern day Johannesburg, but I came out the other end rather disappointed.
Told from the point of view of a number of characters, I failed to find a real connection, or picture, of any of them. This wasn't helped by the author often rambling off in a rather poetic fashion - nice writing but ultimately not engaging. So I didn't feel emotionally connected with any of the characters and the only part I felt really moved by was the section where one character is carrying the little dog, Juno, through the streets.
The ending tailed off in a vague way, without a clear sense of an ending or resolution although that was being hinted at; still I wasn't sure what it actually was and what it meant for Gin and her family and friends.
Verdict - could have been good, but missed the mark.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first the multiple narratives in this book seemed interesting and quirky, especially the passages written from the point of view of Juno the little dog. As the book went on (and on and on) I found myself less enchanted with the style of writing and getting confused by which character was who. Due to the lack of detail given to characters the reader does not ever get to fully connect with any one character.

After reading the blurb for this book I expected to know more about Gin before the book ended, but Gin's character didn't seem to be in the forefront. I still have no idea about Gin after this book came to a pretty abrupt ending.

I did not feel satiated after finishing this book.

2.5 stars

[Agnieszka Czoska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akcja Johannesburga dzieje się w historycznym dniu, bohaterowie mówią o śmierci prezydenta, ale książka jest skupiona na czymś innym. Autorka odwołuje się do Pani Dalloway i, jak Cunningham w Godzinach, śledzi strumienie świadomości swoich bohaterów, zanurzonych w codzienności, kompleksach, planach, lękach. Jej narracja jest spokojna i chłodna, pełna koncentracji na poszczególnych osobach. To rzecz bardzo „egocentryczna”, jeśli można użyć tego słowa w znaczeniu neutralnym – bo postacie Melrose są zanurzone w sobie, mimo że niekoniecznie tego sobie życzą. Czasami chcieliby wyrosnąć już z siebie, swojego miasta i kraju – pytanie, czy to możliwe.

więcej: http://arytmia.eu/pani-dalloway-w-rpa...

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got about 40% of the way through this, with decreasing enthusiasm, and when the internal dialogue of the dog appeared I knew it was time to make my apologies and leave. None of the characters are believable, or especially relatable, and it’s not even that convincing a portrait of the city. (Exactly as the jacket image is also inaccurate.) I have never heard anyone call a hadida an ibis, and there were far too many of those “privilege can be painful too” moments a la Ian McEwan and many other beloved bourgeoise writers. So?

[Sarah-Leah Pimentel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel this novel tried to do too much. It evoked the style and themes of Viriginia Woolf well and tried to apply it a specific moment in South Africa's story. It connects the main character with secondary characters and all of them are on their own journey on this day.
However it tries to weave history, politics, place (itself a character) and being into a narrative that does too much and doesn't achieve what it claims to do.

[Alannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing ... I’m struggling to get past page 30. I love South Africa and am interested in everything about its culture, people and places but this book just isn’t ticking the boxes for me. I spent six happy months working in Jo’burg and was lured by the title but I haven’t lost myself in the book!

[Anne Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite atmospheric, almost dreamlike. Not a love letter to Joburg! I read this as I’m soon holidaying in South Africa. It hasn’t made me yearn for the Johannesburg leg! Interesting style of writing, supposedly like Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which I didn’t get on with. Warts and all, combining the nation’s reaction to the death of Nelson Mandela.