Hot Stew

Starred review from April 1, 2021

Mozley's sophomore novel (after 2017's Elmet) parses the relationships between inheritance and wealth, gentrification and squalor, men and women. Agatha Howard is a millionaire with loads of London properties inherited from a father with questionable business ethics. Her current focus is on the redevelopment of a dilapidated Soho building populated by a colorful group of sex workers, sex traffickers, and small-time gangsters. Their microcosm reflects the sharp contrasts between life on the edge of poverty and the wealth of the clients who seek their services. Agatha, on the other hand, seems more interested in her social life, her Borzoi, and the relationship between her husband and her mother. Rumors of eviction ramp up; the residents do not intend to go quietly. As Agatha's plans progress, the tenants stage protests in the streets, her siblings come out of the woodwork wanting pieces of the action, and locals with political aspirations take sides, in a contemporary tale of morals, money, and mischief. VERDICT With tinges of Tom Jones, this is a seriously entertaining romp through one of London's most historic districts, alongside a band of resilient have-nots who are determined to win out over an entitled heiress.--Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA

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March 15, 2021
The bones of history are glimpsed in modern-day London through a Soho building housing prostitutes, addicts, and a French restaurant. Mozley's follow-up to Elmet, her widely praised debut, explores similar themes--property, ownership, gender--but exchanges rural for urban and replaces visceral intensity with something much longer and more sprawling. Through a sizable cast of characters and references to Soho's origins, the author conjures up the notorious London village in all its seedy glory, now awash not only with the sex industry, drinking holes, and crime, but also upscale developments and a more stylish, younger crowd. This modern scenario sits atop earth that has witnessed centuries of human activity, brothels (known as "stews") having characterized the place for centuries. One particular building houses the Des Sables restaurant and is also home to apartments used by prostitutes, among them Precious. Robert Kerr, a retired gangster and one of Precious' clients, used to work for gangland boss Donald Howard, who invested his criminal earnings in property and left it all to his youngest daughter, Agatha. She owns and now wants to develop Precious' building and is trying to evict the prostitutes as well as the homeless drug addicts in the cellar and everyone else. This decision, the women's response, and the disappearance of Cheryl Lavery, one of the homeless people, drive the action, but Mozley's focus is more on her web of interconnected characters than events. And while themes of human trafficking, violence, and depravity seam the narrative, relationships and conversations dominate, sometimes a weakness when central figures can seem two-dimensional and peripheral ones lack definition. Cheryl's transfiguration in the bowels of the city adds a surreal, dreamlike quality to a loose, witty, soapy story that, even while reaching toward cataclysmic events, retains gentle detachment. A long, empathetic vision of place and people is delivered with wide context but less pungency than its title implies.

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April 1, 2021
Capitalism means the riches go to the highest bidder. This is the harsh lesson that brothel workers in Soho, London, learn as they veer close to eviction from their residence, which is prime real estate for gentrification. Precious and Tabitha try to foment protest, but how can the voiceless really make an impact? The building's owner, Agatha Howard, wrestles with her own demons as she makes moves to "blank-slate"" (evict) her tenants. A large cast of characters, from struggling actors to an aging mob hitman and underemployed millennials, populates this novel in which Mozley revisits themes of property and land ownership from her first, Elmet (2017), sometimes struggling to weave these characters' aspirations into a relevant whole. Extraneous descriptions and style deviations detract from the plot's more noble central focus, while a few characters seem less than relevant to the story. Nevertheless, this is a passionate and bruising take on the side effects of an increasingly unequal world, in which the rich and the poor function on alarmingly separate if parallel planes.

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