Homing
2010
Umuzi (Random House Struik)
"When the boulder came down from the mountainside, it must’ve made a sound like the end of the world, rocking the ground with each thunderous landing and recoil. It must have sung through the air, thrashing the bush on the slope into a sappy pulp with every bounce, on its way to embed itself in the lawn of the luxury holiday home below.
Dan did not hear or see this passage. He slept deeply, as teenagers do, waking only when the last impact shuddered the foundations of the house. He knew immediately what it was, though. Not an earthquake, not a bomb. His first thought on waking was this: the mountain is falling on top of us."
A wife lies to her husband, seeking refuge from her dowdy life in the plush hotel that overlooks their home. A man ascends the glass-topped dome of a mall in search of a lost childhood memory. History comes to life for a young boy trapped in the city library. An elderly woman nurses a football star back to health …
In these evocative and exquisitely crafted short stories, Henrietta Rose-Innes gives us an extraordinary glimpse into a selection of ordinary lives. Diverse characters – a teenager learning to be a boyfriend, an ageing copywriter, a girl on the brink of womanhood – are animated in sparse, sparkling prose. The Cape Town they mostly inhabit is both a playground and an obstacle course, filled with menace and delight. Through this landscape, like the pigeons in the title story, they find new paths home – and are themselves transformed by the journey.
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