'Woolf produced blooms that are impossible to emulate. Johannesburg provides evidence of a novelist who can grow inimitable flowers herself' Spectator

6 December 2013.
It is a searing hot day in Johannesburg. Gin has returned to the city of her birth to throw a party for her mother's eightieth birthday. She is determined, with lists and meals and flower arrangements, to show her that she has become a fully capable woman. She knows, deep down, her mother will only ever see a lost cause.

Meanwhile outside, crowds of citizens and the world's media have gathered to hear the expected announcement: Nelson Mandela has died.
Set across the course of a single momentous day and narrated by a chorus of voices, Fiona Melrose's second novel is a hymn to an extraordinary city and its people, an ambitious homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on mothers and daughters, justice and love.

'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

'Melrose beautifully captures the simmering, shimmering city and the vivid characters that walk its tense streets' Psychologies