Hot Stew

Ambitious, clever, brilliant and very funny . . . If Elmet announced the arrival of a bright new voice in British literature, Hot Stew confirms Mozley as a writer of extraordinary empathic gifts * Observer * A dazzling Dickensian tale . . . In an age when so many novelists of Mozley's generation take refuge in the dystopian, she has reinvigorated large-scale social realism for our times * Guardian, Book of the Day * A complex mosaic of urban life . . . The Soho Mozley captures with such intensity is not a mere locality. It is a microcosm of swarming humanity. Change is, of course, a constant, but Mozley's Hot Stew arrives like a clarion call to take up arms not against change per se, but against the homogenisation that so slowly but steadily suppresses it * The Times * A rollicking tale of pimps and prostitutes, property and posterity * Alex Preston, Observer * There's no evidence of difficult second-novel syndrome here . . . At one level this rangily plotted romp is a pure nostalgia trip: a portrait of pre-pandemic Soho with all its unlikely cheek-by-jowl conjunctions and heady mixture of pleasure and sleaze. But it's also an exploration of exploitation and desire, privilege and prejudice * Daily Mail * A gripping novel bursting with life. The second novel by the Booker-shortlisted novelist is a real treat . . . Mozley doesn't try to over-moralise, navigating the lives of her large (but just shy of being confusingly big) cast in matter-of-fact, elegant prose. There's also sharp wit running through the novel . . . if you're looking for characters bursting with life and a story that can keep you hooked, Hot Stew will deliver * Sunday Times * At its best, it recalls the kind of capacious, rollicking satires Britain produced in and around the Thatcher era - ambitious, scathing and damn good fun * TLS * A sprawling novel of London life packed with picaresque characters . . . undeniably Dickensian in style, but its concerns couldn't be more contemporary . . . This is a compelling snapshot of a city teeming with vitality * Evening Standard * Where the mystical, elemental qualities of Elmet earned it comparisons with Lawrence and Hardy, her second novel is a sprawling urban comedy more likely to recall Ben Jonson or Dickens . . . fluent and witty . . . she moves easily between mordant satire and warmly eccentric character comedy in this invigorating trumpet blast against London's increasing homogenisation * Daily Telegraph * There are energy and ambition here, especially in the novel's bravura opening, which telescopes dizzyingly from the bare fields of the 16th century to the Soho of the glittering present by way of a hectic time lapse in which I could almost hear the bricks clinking into place * Literary Review * Fiona Mozley's Elmet was a breakout title in 2017 and her follow-up Hot Stew should make even more waves . . . Deftly exploring a very real clash of cultures, this is a funny and smart book * Stylist * The talented Mozley takes on gentrification, Soho and property in a rambunctious, rewarding read * i * Hot Stew has a Dickensian feel, as we follow the inhabitants of a Soho brothel in their fight to stop a property developer from kicking them out of their townhouse . . . this bold novel is a confident and engrossing read * Gloss Magazine * Mozley's Soho is a village populated by a cast of characters as vivid and memorable as any imagined by Dickens. In gorgeously beguiling prose, their pasts and presents are deftly woven into a story that tells uncomfortable truths about power and money and the state of our cities. I loved this book * Louise Kennedy * Mozley has an incredible gift for writing place . . . Hot Stew reads like a great night out in a city that never sleeps. Her characters have a Dickensian swagger. They are backstreet heroes and villains, trying not to be eaten alive by the city they both love and hate * Jan Carson * Fiona Mozley not only fulfills her promise but surpasses it. Her new stew is such a steaming, fuming mix of life, lust and London that in the end you feel like you've eaten all of Soho * Hallgrimur Helgason, author of The Woman at 1000 Degrees * Reading Hot Stew felt like a privileged day trip to a place now beyond reach . . . Mozley's prose is precise, controlled, unshowy, deceptively readable . . . But the pleasure of Hot Stew is the company it offers. Our voyeuristic pleasure in the lives of the people we are spending the pages of this novel with * Herald * Mozley's prose echoes - and pays homage to - the metre of the Bard . . . despite so many characters, the novel doesn't flail, it succeeds as a force . . . to direct so many through a labyrinthine story in just over 300 pages is a kind of mastery * Irish Times * A realistic, humorous, non-judgmental take. A lively, pacy read that gives more than a nod to Dickens and is all the better for it * Sunday Independent Review *