Friday Books - Johannesburg

Where has the week gone? Too much work, too little reading, that's where.

BookBeginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader, and The Friday 56 - hosted by Freda’s Voice both host sites for Friday link ups, where we discover more books, and make friends. Both involve sharing excerpts from a current book - the beginning and - you guessed it - page 56.

I've finished this one already. Here's  the Goodreads blurb:

Johannesburg by Fiona Melrose

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.

The perfect opening. Johannesburg, in December - this book plays out on a single day in 2013, when Mandela died - is renowned for its thunderstorms. So much atmosphere in two short sentences.

I loved this book. I love this city. I read it also in a single day, and enjoyed every minute.  Here's my review.

Thanks for the visit. What are you sharing today?