Fresh Hell
Author: Rachel Johnson
Publishers: Penguin paperback;
Pgs: 304
The third in Johnson’s installment of Notting Hill novels, Fresh Hell sees the writer take on issues of monolith culture, excess glamour, super-rich ennui and adulterous friendships. The setting is Notting Hill or “Notting hell” as Johnson would quip, where pretentious jetsetters encounter carefully dishevelled artsy types. The resulting concoction is a matrix of individuals not entirely dissatisfied with their lot, yet vaguely impatient with the more exuberantly privileged of their milieu. It would not be amiss here to mention that Rachel Johnson is the sister of the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and is a resident of Notting Hill herself. This familiarity with place provides an authorial tone that is never ribald or quick to horror but is instead affectionately bemused, a stance more observant than righteous. Such neutrality should be emulated especially by the neo-communists of today, who lambast the affluence of the admittedly gaudy but feel placidly entitled to their own measure of ease.
The character of Mimi Fleming, a journalist and mother, has been accorded most of Johnson’s attention and provides the central conscience for the entirety of the novel. She is both mildly appalled and mildly indignant at the beautiful crassness and wealth of the more newly minted and communicates this displeasure to the reader with a little more sprightliness than a continuing ‘inward shudder’. Her unrest is fuelled in part by the continuing gentrification of her beloved neighbourhood, and as she muses while buying organic Cox apples: “the bad thing that happened is that everything that made Portobello ‘badass’ has gone forever, vanished, never to return… chi-chi artisanal bakeries and coffee places selling cronuts and pistachio filled croissants, and an outpost of Soho House selling Italian fennel sausage pizza at eight pounds a slice have taken their place.” Her nostalgia for a place with more charm and less coin will make sense to any reader with more culture and perhaps less Chanel.
Though Notting Hill may be in danger of having its quaint gleam obscured by the ideology of expansion and the roaring motors of various magnates and wives, Johnson never engages in snobbery and outraged disdain at their newness. In fact, there is more a type of amiable ‘inward chuckle’ accompanying her observation, especially when the character of Oksana Dunbar is brought into the fray. At a young mummies gathering of the “coconut water” variety she is described as having “thick, ropey long blonde hair” and wearing a “clinging delicate T-shirt of the sort that screams that it actually costs 200 pounds and necklaces resting in a spaghetti tangle between her breasts.” The latter belongs to the category of the UHNW (ultra high net individuals) who might have the looks of a “model-stroke-hooker” but is in fact the founder of an art business-cum-fashion line. Throughout the novel there are allusions to Oksana’s brazen gold-diggerish proclivities but also concessions made to her forthrightness and sheer, if tedious, ambition. Scenes where the absent-minded Mimi has to confront the relentless push of Oksana’s gusto are some of the best in the narrative. Also to be lauded are the blog posts of Mimi’s adolescent daughter, Mirabel, who at one point belies sterling wisdom in noting “I never get it when women think they’re clever just because they’ve chosen something to buy, as if its some sort of creative act.”
Mimi retains, throughout, a sense of eeriness at how her idiosyncratic, neighbourhood is slowly being engulfed by the totteringly thin, the staggeringly and dangerously wealthy who covet construction (underground swimming pools, private cinemas) at the cost of destabilising the mottled charm of well-heeled bohemia. Read this novel for the hilarious cattiness between the understated and the parvenu. Though Johnson’s style is airy and jocular, there is a fine sensibility punctuating her text. Fresh Hell is a great read for social observers and socialites alike.
The reviewer is a freelance columnist