RaveThe Independent (UK)Reid brings her sharp gaze to the classic campus novel, and university life provides her with similarly rich material when it comes to deconstructing privilege ... Part of what has always made campus stories so captivating is that they show us character as a work in progress –because our university days have always been about working out our sense of self. But contemporary tales like Reid’s are a necessary reminder: this leisurely exploration is a luxury not everyone can afford.
Quentin Tarantino
PositiveThe Evening Standard (UK)Though the writing still has the rat-a-tat pace of a screenplay, this is not a straightforward, beat for beat adaptation. It’s intriguing to see where the director lingers and where he rushes ... Without that final set-piece looming over it, the narrative flits around untethered. Tarantino’s concern here is world-building, luxuriating in an era and a genre that he is clearly fascinated by - to the extent that factual digressions about 60s filmmakers are constantly cropping up. Swathes of the novel are a strange, rag-tag mix of pulpy action, Western melodrama (in chapters where the plot of a pilot episode in which Rick is guest-starring is expanded upon at length) and interpolated cinema history. It’s hard to escape the feeling that Tarantino is writing his own fanfiction - albeit with undeniable flair. At several points, he sneakily inserts versions of himself into the narrative, like the novelistic equivalent of his film cameos ... All of his other hallmarks (spot the unnecessary references to feet) are present and correct - including shades of misogyny and the countless racial slurs which, as ever, he almost seems to be goading us with. Tarantino would doubtless argue, as he has done before, that he’s simply realistically portraying the attitudes of the time - his fellow director Spike Lee has laid out a strong counter-argument on many occasions, too. This novel won’t change your stance on Tarantino; it will simply entrench it further. This contrarian probably wouldn’t have it any other way.
Jean Hanff Korelitz
RaveThe Evening Standard (UK)... darkly witty, compulsive ... Even without the Ripley references, The Plot has all the propulsive twists and mounting dread of a Patricia Highsmith novel; the passages in which Jake becomes trapped in his own head, paralysed by the fear of being \'relegated to the circle of shamed writers forever and without hope of appeal\' are claustrophobic but queasily readable. His story is cleverly interwoven with chapters from Crib, which play out like something from Gillian Flynn; the reveal of the book’s much-vaunted twist comes in tandem with some real-life revelations ... Korelitz has plotted her own story so rigorously that there are plenty of signposts (some of them literary) if you look carefully enough, but the reveal is so well-executed that it remains deeply satisfying. Her knowing send-ups of the literary world - and the creative writing industrial complex - are a snarky delight, too. It’s part page-turner, part literary satire - an unusual mix, but a thrilling one.
Fiona Mozley
PositiveThe Standard (UK)[U]ndeniably Dickensian in style, but its concerns couldn’t be more contemporary ... Set in and around a crumbling Soho townhouse that will become a key battleground in the war of gentrification waged by an icily unscrupulous landlord, Hot Stew introduces us to an interconnected cast of characters spanning every social strata ... That all these disparate stories are able to finally knot together cogently is testament to careful plotting. A final twist feels cleverly conceived, instead of coming off like a last-minute tidy-up job, and had me combing back through the story to look for clues I might have missed ... This is a compelling snapshot of a city teeming with vitality, a love letter to, as one character puts it, \'the sense of being at the centre of things,\' and a reminder of what London stands to lose if its stories are wiped out in pursuit of profit.
