Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley
A review of Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley.
“Trade and commerce and common sense and common decency prevailed, and men and women availed themselves of all opportunities. New roads were laid; office blocks shot up. And luxury flats stood on crumbling slums like shining false teeth on rotten gums.”
Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (2021) Published by Algonquin Books.
I will embarrassingly admit, I don’t think I’ve really read contemporary British literature at all. In school we had to read all of the classic (and very white) European novels and poems, but we never really had anything above the year that our man Charles Dickens was alive and writing. I’ve lived in this strange bubble where I’ve tended to shut out most European literature, focusing more towards Asian and Southern American literature, and because of it there’s been a strange void on my literary world map.
My second confession of this review was that I picked this book up based on the cover. I’m very into contemporary covers where we have bold pink lettering and fonts, it’s like my biggest love when it comes to book covers. And so, when I saw this baby at my local library, I snatched her based on the cover. We really do judge books by their covers around here, don’t we?
Now here’s the review!
Content
As someone not acquainted with London at all, this book was absolutely fascinating to read as someone interested in contemporary history, albeit fictional to an extent. I know absolutely nothing about London (I won’t dare to say I know anything now after reading a single British book), I felt liked a learned a little bit about the neighborhood of Soho at the very least. That’s where the heart of our story is set, with a rather large cast of characters.
There are many characters in this book, which didn’t really interest me and kind of broke the pacing. I can’t vibe with a novel that switches characters every chapter, I get too confused. My brain is quite small, thus I have a very bad memory. I literally cannot remember an entire ensemble cast when it comes to novels, let alone some blockbuster movie. The characters are vaguely interconnected by the neighborhood and circumstance, but some of the characters tend to fall into certain archetypes within their stories and lack a particular nuance—the problem with having too many characters.
This is a novel about power and class. We have a neighborhood in which a rich woman, named Agatha, is attempting to massively gentrify everything in this little Soho neighborhood. And, well, of course the residents don’t like that, and the sex workers stage a rebellion of their own. When times are tough, and while many of the prostitutes unfortunately came into the trade by trafficking, others tend to choose to live this life. And, at the end of the day, the novel shows that they support each other no matter what and have solidarity.
That’s the strength in this book: the relationships the characters have with each other. The storytelling and writing are sharp, but there’s just not enough substance for me to care about the plot as a whole. There are no grey areas, no nuances that make me scream and cry and understand both sides of the story. I’m liberal, but this felt like a skewered perspective that comes across as a bit propoganda-y at the end of the day. I think gentrification is bad, but the woman who was the villain doing it lacked depth, so we were forced to essentially hate it. Not my cup of tea at the end of the day.
Overall Thoughts
A fun fact that I learned during this read and while doing some research afterwards: “stew” is an old Victorian slang word for the word “brothel.” So that title is actually quite direct, believe it or not. I was so confused by the title originally and as I was reading, but once I found that out, a light clicked on upstairs. All in all, I think this is a well-written book, but not my cup of tea due to the lack of grey areas. It’s a compelling read, and I do recommend it, but I wouldn’t recommend buying a copy first. Find it at your library before committing to that.
