Hot Stew is sort of a tapestry of a story that weaves itself together through the course of the novel. It starts off with a bunch of loose threads – a wandering snail which escapes the escargot entree, homeless squatters who perform card tricks for money, prostitutes who create a garden on their roof terrace, a real estate developer whose closest intimate is her greyhound. Mozley uses third person omniscient narrative to flesh out each of these stories, giving each thread equal weight and development.

This strategy was a little slow going for me at the beginning and I had a hard time keeping track of all the characters and their relation to the central narrative. (The story revolves around a wealthy heiress/real estate developer who wants to evict the homeless and prostitutes from a building she owns, so she can raze it and redevelop the site.)

Many of the characters have secret lives. The wealthy heiress inherited her money from a father she never met, and knows most of the money was probably obtained illegally. A prostitute used to work in a beauty salon and has two boys who are raised by her mother-in-law and don’t know how their mother earns a living. An alcoholic impulsively defends the homeless people who busk at his local bar, trying to forget his past life shaking down similar characters for a local gangster.

The fraying of each thread (not to overdo the tapestry metaphor) oddly helps bring the narrative together. The disparate characters have more in common than we expect, or that they will ever realize.

It took a while for me to enter into the story, and I found the narrative voice made it difficult to identify or empathize with any one character too closely. I did ultimately get on board with the narrative project and curiously read on to see how it would come together.

I give this book 3👍 out of 5👍.