Rachel Johnson says this is the third and final volume of the “Notting Hell” trilogy, her gentle satire of the “haves and have yachts” who flounce around W11 in their Range Rover Evoques, balancing huge young families and soya flat whites. That’s probably wise: Fresh Hell has the flimsiest of plots, based on – seriously – a planning dispute about another “iceberg” house causing “misery” for the residents of Ponsonby Terrace.
Meanwhile, poor Mimi, forced by her husband to relocate from her gorgeous Dorset farmhouse back to one of the most expensive parts of London, finds herself in the arms of a Turner prize-nominated artist. That particular fling ends in exactly the same way as Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs, but is rather more obviously signposted.
In fact, Fresh Hell is utterly predictable from start to finish, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its charms. Johnson knows these people, and though she never pierces their bubble, she has a lot of fun along the way.
