#Review - Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Shrines of Gaiety
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday (Penguin Random House) 27 September 2022
Available as: HB, 448pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy via Netgalley
ISBN(HB): 9780857526557

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Shrines of Gaiety via Netgalley to consider for review.

In Kate Atkinson's latest novel, set in Jazz Age London on the eve of the General Strike, death comes frequently and often with little sense and little meaning. The Great War may be over but that sense of life being chancy and cheap lingers.

The bodies of young women, apparently drowned, are trawled form the Thames. They receive scant respect - a policeman trying to investigate has to hunt round several sites where a corpse may or not be kept before he finds what he is looking for.

Other young women (girls, really) are trafficked into the back rooms of nightclubs; some fall victim to drug overdoses.

The roads are dangerous, with no training needed before one can drive, and they claim their victim too. 

There is ever present street crime, sometimes spilling over into murder.

And, of course, poverty, hunger and disease consume so many that the victims - whether dead or on their way - are taken for granted, with those sleeping in churchyards or under bridges simply ignored.

I found this plethora of deaths a little reminiscent of Atkinson's Life After Life, largely set in the same period, in which the same character lived (and died) again and again, gradually outwitting Fate as though playing a game and able to respawn aware of future dangers and difficulties. The difference is of course that in Shrines of Gaiety there are no second chances though many would wish there were. The weight of the War hangs over everyone here, whether they took part (Gwendolen, the no-nonsense librarian from York, served as a nurse, Niven, eldest son of shady nightclub owner Nellie Coker, served in the ranks), avoided the war, were too young, or stood and waited, as fathers, husbands, sons, friends and brothers fell to the mud and the wire. (Yes, and lovers too).

That may be the reason for the frenzied pleasure-seeking taking place in the book as the Bright Young Things celebrate their survival, try to bury dark memories, or simply look forward not back - all accompanied by a great deal of moral tutting from the older, Victorian generation. If that gives the impression of the book as being rather loud, don't worry, it's not. The partying is mainly offstage, the story mostly taking place during hungover mornings and on dark nights after the clubs have closed. All the decadence does though make for a vibrant nightlife in Soho, with many lucrative opportunities for those who provide the pleasure, or at least, facilitate it: the book features hostesses in the clubs, sex workers, drug dealers, thieves, and police on the make. And of course young innocents who've come to London to make their fortune.

Gwendolen Kelling is not one of these. A former librarian who lost most of her family in the war, she may be seeking meaning, or she may be missing the emotional pitch of the war, or she may just be good-hearted, practical and eager to help. Or perhaps all of these things. In any case, she's trekked down to London in search of Freda Murgatroyd and Florence Ingram, two young women who ran away seeking careers dancing on the stage. We see (some of) what happens to them, their trials standing in somewhat for all the poor unfortunates dragged out of the river, reduced to selling themselves or dancing in the clubs for hours night after night, or ruined by drugs.

DCI Frobisher, on the other hand, may still be something of an innocent. Sent in to clean up the notoriously corrupt Bow Street station, despite his seniority and service in the police he's still upright and still seems to believe in the redemption of a corrupt Force. He also however believes in the threat posed to morality by such as Nellie Coker and he soon employs Gwendolen to infiltrate the shadier clubs, despite misgivings that he may be putting her in harm's way.

Others are less innocent. Nellie and her brood (not just Niven, but also Edith, Betty, Shirley, Ramsay, and Kitty) and their rivals (the profitable clubs are rich prizes) and a host of others are out to squeeze all they can (pleasure, money, power) from the good times, or are simply ready to do what they must to survive. Atkinson is very good at showing how narrow the margin is between survival and destruction, and how simple acts of care (like Gwendolen saving the life of a gangster in a club or Frobisher giving a half crown to a starving girl) can make a difference. As can little bits of meanness - the theft of a handbag or just looking the other way or not thinking about the plight a young woman may be in.

As she allows the paths of all these people to cross and re-cross in the West End and Soho, Atkinson's abilities to layer an intricate narrative and bring her characters alive really serves the reader here as meetings (chance, planned, and missed) and depictions of characters, places and events knit together to produce a tight and fascinating story. She both creates a powerful sense of a particular time and place and also happily accommodates flashbacks from that time to show earlier years in York, the days of the War or even further back when Nellie was founding her empire.  

Indeed, the book is so well-written and observed that events and plot taking place now are almost immaterial. There isn't a sense in this book of needing to get to the next thing that happens or of waiting to understand why the last thing that happened did. Rather, I wanted to see what these fascinating, alive people would do next, how they would react to things, what their next moves would be. And also, of course, to understand that marvellous picture of a place, a time and an atmosphere.

There is so much in Shrines of Gaiety. A glorious central character in the redoubtable (yet so nice) Gwendolen. A portrait of a place and time a hundred years back, close to ours (the same streets one can walk today, the thrill of seeing celebrities and prominent people behaving badly) but also so strange and different (the overhang of war, foreknowledge of a further war to come).  A matter of fact portrayal of human trafficking and abuse (there are some similar themes to Atkinson's Big Sky in that respect). A sense of... I don't quite know how to put this. Of possibility? Of indeterminacy? Some things that happen here may not happen, or may be open to question, as though - for all the gritty reality - what's being described is a time spent slightly aside from the real world, in which consequences may not follow. Some references to A Midsummer Night's Dream perhaps support that, those radiant, dazzling clubs perhaps a portal to a fairyland where nothing is quite real.

But at the same time, fairyland is a perilous place and "we pay a tithe to Hell". For many in Shrines of Gaiety, consequences do follow. We see the clubs, tawdry and harshly lit, the next morning, we see those bodies in the river and we see the hangovers and the desperate attempts by some to ride themselves of consequences. A shrine is a place for worship and sacrifice and there is plenty of blood in this book.

It's a book I adored, Atkinson at her very best, engaging with themes that, behind the tinsel and glitter, are weighty and important - and entertaining the reader at every turn. 

For more information about Shrines of Gaiety, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley

Hot Stew
Fiona Mozley
John Murray, 18 March 2021
Available as: HB, 320pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529327205

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Hot Stew via NetGalley.

One of the many striking effects of the year we've all just lived through has been the emptying out of busy city centres. Nowhere, I imagine (I haven't been able to go there to see) can this have been more startling than in Soho, the part of London most firmly associated in the popular imagination with bustling nightlife: with clubs, restaurants and bars, the gay scene, the film and music business, the sex trade.

Mozley's novel gives us a glimpse of this district, in all its contradictions, still active and vibrant yet threatened by gentrification, by the spread of bland investment properties and above all by a meta-ness that trades on the sleazy image while holding its nose and standing one pace back. Yet in pointing to these threats, Hot Stew isn't a sentimental book by any means. One of the central characters, sex worker Precious, reflects of the district that 'There are people here who would sell their own mothers, or eat you alive. If society fell apart... this is the last place she would want to be.'

No more sentimental is Agatha, whose viewpoint we follow for a fair chunk of the novel. Agatha has inherited a property empire built by her father based on violence and other forms of lawlessness. He went "legit", up to a point, and now she is trying to go more legit, tidying away the sex workers and immigrants from her properties - "blank slating" them as she describes it - so that after modernisation or replacement, new tenants can be moved in. Agatha is an absolutely appalling example of somebody who sees life in transactional terms, as she shows over and again, treating her relationship with a dog, even a horse, a young employee in just just the same way, taking what she wants, turning her regard off and on as it suits here, paying no attention to the others' nature or needs. 

Yet Mozley does show us how this attitude may at least partly be rooted in Agatha's insecurity and fear of losing what she has. She has studied history ('The fragility of law and order is never far from Agatha's thoughts') and she keeps a yacht ('named Versailles') ready on the river in case things go bad quickly. She remembers how badly, as the daughter of a Russian immigrant, she was treated by the posh girls at the school her mother slaved to put her through.

There is a contrast between Agatha and the sex workers whose future is (as much as anything is) at the heart of Hot Stew. Precious and campaigns against the redevelopment of her home ands workplace, one of Agatha's assets, becoming a real thorn in Agatha's flesh, and that of the police and city authorities. Mozley paints Precious's working setup as something of an ideal, a relatively safe space where she has control and agency, acknowledging that other women find themselves in much worse, more exploitative circumstances, even in captivity. This is a controversial issue and Hot Stew, while pointing to the risks of well-meaning interventions, doesn't draw conclusions but instead highlights the complexity of real life.

The book also explores other denizens of Soho: Robert, a retired hard man, sits drinking with insecure young actor Lorenzo in the afternoon in a bar that is also under threat of modernisation. Roster is Agatha's fixer and enforcer, a tool from the old days that she can't, quite do without. (He's also her dog walker - Robert, remembering him from another life, sees him as a ghost walking a dog)  There is a young corporate lawyer, Bastian, whose relationship with his alpha girlfriend is under pressure. An ambitious police officer on the make. And, most strikingly of all, a group of homeless people whose existence roaming the streets and dossing in a cellar makes them a kind of chorus in this book: it's they who, literally, feel the tremors as a massive engineering project takes place under Soho, as oligarchs burrow down and down under their houses to create lavish suites where who knows what may go on, as construction trucks and delivery vans shake the streets.

Indeed, the homeless group gives this story an almost timeless sense, blending the present with the post, with more than a hint of fantasy. Is their leader, the "archbishop" really some ancient figure who remembers when Soho was fields and woods? Or is he just another man trying to cling on? We are given differing stories. Where do the couple referred to as "Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee" (they do a really bad magic act in the pubs and bars) really come from - what lives have they lived before and who are they connected to? One of them will, in this story, almost step out of their world to experience something quite different, causing consternation for those left behind.

Mozley weaves together all these elements and many more, creating a real sense of bustle and sprawling activity, of intersecting lives, most of them tinged by regret: Lorenzo at getting typecast based on his brown(ish) skin, Agatha beset by the half-siblings whose inheritance she enjoys, another young woman hovering on the edge of homelessness, only able to find a place to stay that's not-quite-above-board. Of all these figures, Precious perhaps regrets least. She's the one for whom Soho is both most permanent  (she has a decent flat, a steady income) and most temporary (eviction is threatened, but even without that she's here for a purpose, and will move on when it's done). But she is also one of the more vulnerable.  

Hot Stew creates a powerful sense of movement, with the characters who are going somewhere and others who are just going, who can't rest or settle. It jumps backwards and forwards to show what these people are to each other and what they have been, creating little "aha" moments when the reader spots events or people through new eyes, underlining the degree to which all perspectives are partial. It's a very human book: even with her flaws, there is sympathy for Agatha.  Another character, Rebecca, who came across to me as rather unpleasant, is really stupid rather than bad ('Rebecca was emphatically apolitical, which meant she liked things the way they were.') Robert regrets his violent past and refuses to be drawn back into it. Lorenzo breaks with Robert on learning a dark secret about him, but hates himself for doing that.

The book is full of beautiful writing and characterisation. We are told that 'There's something about the night in this city that is brighter than the day'. Rebecca is 'a highly measured person. Bastian is frequently astonished by her levels of self-control'. Precious 'puts on a voice that is sweet and pliable, a voice she reserves for men'. While Agatha's senses 'only decipher the present', a dog uses its nose to 'deal with history'. After a betrayal says that she '"was an idiot for trusting [her]. But whatever. Damage done. lesson learned. I've moved on." Precious has not moved on.' The writing simply flows, making even most mundane episodes a joy to read, stuffed with insights and unexpected perspectives. Covering several months in its characters' lives, it isn't forced and doesn't round everything off neatly. Whatever the challenges and changes, the comings and goings, Soho will continue and its people will adapt.

I would really, really recommend Hot Stew. 

For more information about Hot Stew, see the publisher's website here.