Fiona Melrose
Teoksen Midwinter tekijä
Tekijän teokset
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Sukupuoli
- female
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
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.
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/… (lisätietoja)
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/johannesburg-by-fiona-melrose/… (lisätietoja)
Oh my goodness this is so, so sad. Really sad. Beautiful and lyrical, complex and grounding - but so sad! A father and son are learning how to live, to grieve and to communicate in the years following the death of Landyn's wife / Vale's Mum. Tragedy and emotion weigh heavy on the farm, the atmosphere is thick and oppressive, but full of love and a deep sense of unconditional love. In amongst the lives of the humans, animals appear and tangle themselves in the hauntings. Dogs, pigs, and a fox - all allow the men to show them love, to connect to their spirit and offer them strength and hope to continue. A powerful novel - but on tot read when you're feeling strong.… (lisätietoja)
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As they recover from their injuries, the father and son start to look back at the events that brought them to this night. It is a painful process for both as they are full of anguish a decade after the event. Alternating between their perspectives we learn about the landscape of Zambia and how tough a life it was out there to Suffolk where they are now. As each man contemplates the sharp elements of his grief, we learn how they grasp for crumbs of comfort for the lady that they lost all that time ago.
It took a little while for me to get into this book. The flipping between the father and son and the harsh African and gritty English landscapes is slightly unnerving and the story seeps into you. I couldn't quite see where it was going, then something clicked in the story and Melrose's power as a storyteller made this quite a poignant book showing how people deal, or more correctly don't cope with, the long-term effects of grief. I liked the prose too, it has the same wistful melancholy to At Hawthorn time by Melissa Harrison. Will definitely be reading Johannesburg by her.… (lisätietoja)