THIS WEEK’S NEW BOOKS REVIEWED | FEATURE
HOT STEW
Fiona Mozley (Hodder & Stoughton)
A determined change of pace from Fiona Mozley’s enthralling debut, Elmet, which focussed on a family making their own way in a land of forests and fistfights, Hot Stew instead pitches the reader into a different sort of survival tale. The focus this time is on the future of a sororally-co-operative Soho brothel, part of a block noted as “Not Achieving Its Full Potential” and thus fair game for redevelopment by the insatiable, capitalism-made-flesh figure of property developer Agatha.
Within the battle lines drawn by this depressingly familiar conflict between longstanding urban culture and profit-driven gentrification, Mozley weaves a fine tale, rich with authentically written relationships, such as those between the women working in the brothel and the maids – older women, retired from prostitution – who look after their younger charges. It’s these relationships which are painted in fullest colour as the resistance is organised. Soho’s brilliant contrasts too, are brought to life in clear definition here: sleaze and sophistication; abject poverty and absolute affluence.
Any reader already acquainted with the area will feel the pages glow with a familiar neon vibrancy and perhaps a sense of poignant nostalgia, as Hot Stew forces a reflection on what has been lost from our cities to the relentless, soul-for-sale, cultural vandalism that has dominated decision-making over the last decade and more.
Price: £16.99. Info: here
Words HUGH RUSSELL
THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET
Catriona Ward (Viper)
When a toddler named Lulu goes missing, the victim’s older sister Dee is inevitably marred by the terror of it all. Dee recalls the day she should have been taking care of her at the lake’s edge and how the years that follow are full of pain and loss for her and her remaining family. When her parents die and Dee is left to carry the burden alone, she struggles to fathom that her sister’s body is still yet to be found, so many years on.
Ted, an unusual and deeply lonely young man, is also haunted by the disappearance of Lulu, particularly after police made him a suspect and the media pasted his face in the eyes of the public. He is a very private person in a house full of secrets. The last thing he needs is the wrong kind of attention… an attention that Dee insists on giving him.
There are so many layers to The Last House On Needless Street, as if tragedy, horror, empathy, humour, medical science, and more were all thrown into one big pot and stirred into an unforgettable, dark soup. The reader’s mind is fed incessantly with twists of a disturbing nature, the plot jumping from the POV of Lauren (Ted’s daughter), Olivia (Ted’s cat), Dee and Ted himself. Who is lying? Where is Lulu? Will the mysteries of Needless Street be uncovered?
Phenomenal reading. The absolute best, genre-defying book I’ve read in a long time.
Price: £12.99. Info: here
words KARLA BRADING
A NATION OF SINGING BIRDS
Ronald Rees (Y Lolfa)
In this authoritative study of the Welsh people’s singular relationship with song, and hymns in particular, Ronald Rees charts a path from the founding of the highly influential Calvinistic branch of Methodism in Wales through to an assessment of the present health of male voice choirs. This welcome overview of 500 years of congregational singing in all its guises draws heavily on eye-witness accounts from each period, and as such this inevitably leads to a somewhat lopsided reading experience: the earlier passages feel somewhat undercooked, if only because Rees is shackled to the hyperbolic but vague descriptions of those 18th century testimonies. Perhaps a broader brush might’ve been required at the outset.
Having said that, the book truly comes into its own during the descriptions of the pioneering Welsh who left their homeland for the New World and their outsized influence upon the cultural landscape. The sense of community fostered by public singing appears to be the foundations on which many settlements were built. Here, one feels Rees has reached his true point of interest, and perhaps the writing is reflective of this.
The political context in which these religious/musical movements took place is never forgotten throughout the book – beginning with the embrace of chapel instead of the Anglican Church, taking into account the role Paul Robeson played in championing the plight of Welsh miners, and acknowledging the irony that rugby, the national sport of Wales and home to its most stirring examples of public singing, was invented in an upper-class English public school. Much like the fervour and orational skill described within the pages of A Nation Of Singing Birds, this book builds to a graceful climax reveling in the history of this land of song.
Price: £12.99. Info: here
words ADAM JONES
THE THINGS WE’VE SEEN
Agustín Fernández Mallo [trans. Thomas Bunstead] (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
An astonishing piece of literature from Spanish author Agustín Fernández Mallo [pictured, top – credit Aina Lorente Solivellas]: The Things We’ve Seen is comprised of three parts, each distinct enough to act as a standalone novel in scope and size, connected by certain characters and events. Book one transports the reader to a small island off the Spanish coast, where an unnamed writer has travelled for a conference. He then decides to return to the unoccupied island without informing anyone, following the discovery that the island was used as Franquist concentration camp during the Spanish Civil War.
In the second story, Kurt Montana is introduced as the fourth astronaut who accompanied Neil Armstrong and co to the moon. Looking back on his life, here the subtle connections interlinking the characters are explored. In the final part of the book, Normandy is the setting for a woman who is retracing a previous trip she had taken with her partner, who we learn she has not seen for two years. This part is perhaps the most prominent in terms of current affairs, touching on Brexit and the refugee crisis.
Spanning different horizons, a dreamlike state punctuates The Things We’ve Seen, leading to questions about whether events are actually occurring. An ambitious, impactful and clever book, one which may be beneficial to read as three separate books to soak up the language.
Price: £14.99/£6.99 ebook. Info: here
words RHIANON HOLLEY
1312: AMONG THE ULTRAS
James Montague (Ebury)
Reprinted precisely one year after its initial publication in March 2020, James Montague’s extensively researched, quasi-undercover journey through the intense, often fight-happy ‘ultra’ fangroups of club football has been thrown into sharper focus by a 12-month stretch with, globally, almost no crowds permitted to gather and watch games. Although he devotes a couple of updated pages to it near the end of 1312, it remains a strange paradox: a greatly significant development in the culture with very little to report on. The pandemic, a financial disaster for teams of all sizes, has only rendered football more of a product. “You can’t sell it if there’s an empty stadium with no atmosphere,” Gianvittorio de Gennaro, an A.S. Roma ultra since his teens, is quoted as saying – a lira for his thoughts now.
There is ample historical detail and geopolitical context to be going on with, though, even if parts of both might look more like pointless, internecine squabbles to outsiders. The UK, where Montague is from, doesn’t have ultras as such, but bears much responsibility for the proliferation of football hooliganism, as interviewees from several countries attest. The hardcore fandoms of South America, Italy, Turkey and the Balkans, to name a few, have eclipsed the British hoolie tradition both aesthetically – banners, songs and what gets called ‘pyro’ and ‘choreo’ – and, in many cases, for sheer eyepopping violence.
Montague grants that writing about this stuff puts him on a sticky wicket, regarding the danger of glorifying its extreme elements. He interviews a number of neo-Nazis, and others with pretty indefensible nationalist outlooks, as well as breaking bread with various hardened criminals. One never feels that the author has any such sympathies, nor is 1312 (number code for ACAB, hatred of the police being one constant across ultra ideologies) simplistic Danny Dyer-type ruffneck fetishism – or, at least, it does have greater depths than that.
Price: £10.99. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER