Suburban houses shimmer in sunshine. Time drags and doors are bolted against the dark. Gentle Albert, who left his wife and child to seek work in the golden city, is a cleaner by day and poet by night. He and Beauty, the silent cook, live in a different world from their Jewish employers - Oscar, a doctor and weekend gardener, his wife, Eve, and their eight year old daughter, Alice - until tragedy strikes. Set in 1967, in 'Whites only' Johannesburg, The Singing Girl is an evocative tale of Jewish life in South Africa at the time of apartheid, with echoes back to a family's roots in Lithuania. With The Singing Girl, author Vivienne Woolf 's voice transcends boundaries in a story redolent of 1960s South Africa, with all that entails. It is a haunting and evocative novel from a talented first-time author. [Subject: Adult Fiction]