The launch of Denis Hirson’s The dancing and the death of Lemon Street
- By http://www.litnet.co.za/
About The Dancing and the Death of Lemon Street:
“Violence rendered things visible”, writes Denis Hirson in this beautifully crafted, musical novel, which is as much about self-deception, control and the will to power as it is about desire, loneliness and the desperate, blind need for revenge.
It is early 1960 in a leafy, peaceful suburb of Johannesburg, where Lemon Street runs gently downhill, ‘a slope of tranquillity’, where its residents lead orderly lives. Felicity Glanville, a young widow, believes she has finally met the new man of her life, the elegant Mr Van Aarden with his dove-grey Stetson. In a narrow room at the back of the garden, her maid Rosy impatiently awaits the arrival of her lover. Across the street, while his parents engage in yet another heated argument, a schoolboy dreams of a girl. And down past the willow trees at the bottom of the street this girl’s mother prepares a party to celebrate her twentieth wedding anniversary, which will hardly turn out as she expected.
Meanwhile, tremors run through South Africa. Hundreds of men die in the great Clydesdale mine disaster. There is an assassination attempt upon the Prime Minister, Dr Verwoerd. There is the Sharpeville Massacre, which will radically shape the political climate of the country, and permanently alter the lives of certain people on Lemon Street.