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S'està carregant… Johannesburgde Fiona Melrose
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Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. The author uses the day of the death of Mandela's death to create a modern-day Mrs Dalloway. Gin is back from New York, preparing a party for her mother's 80th birthday, whilst her former boyfriend, Peter, tries to understand what has happened to his life, and a young disabled man gradually loses his sanity protesting outside Peter's building. I suspect there are lots of echoes of Mrs Dalloway here - I don't know the novel well enough to really appreciate them, I think. Melrose uses the Gin character to talk about the difficulties of leaving a place, returning, being yourself. She is a modern artist, but there is a lot there that could apply to a writer, I think, and I had autobiographical suspicions. The relationship between Gin and her mother is awful, and the wealthy white environment that Melrose conjures makes it easy to work out why anyone would leave. Peter is a bit of a pathetic character - does anyone moon over someone they never see for twenty years? The character of Saturday is just desperately sad: injured in a wildcat mine strike, he protests outside the mine company HQ every day, whilst his sister tries to keep his body and soul together despite a full time job. I'm not too sure what I thought about the idea of Mandela's death in the background - it makes for large set pieces, as the characters note the gatherings of people outside the family house (in Jo'burg), the newspapers' reaction, the comments of Peter's colleagues. I suspect this book suffered from me picking it up and putting it down again, but then again, perhaps that was because it really didn't grab me? Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
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 prepare to announce Tata's death...So begins Johannesburg, Fiona Melrose's searing second novel. An irascible mother, an anxious daughter trying to negotiate her birthplace and her past, her former lover, their domestic workers, a homeless hunchback fighting for justice, a mining magnate, 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. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
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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.
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.
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/johannesburg-by-fiona-melrose/ ( )