Zero Hours: Book 2 (Manchester Trilogy) - Softcover

Surely already a regional classic of some sort ... This book has its nearest equivalent in Mark Hodkinson’s northern writing. It is unpretentious and powerful, cuttingly honest ... It tightens its grip on you by loosening its hold. It achieves high results by not trying ... It silently slides its tentacles around you, showing you how life in structural poverty feels ... All of this is achieved through very workaday description, interior monologue and dialogue ... The author has mastered the art of tiny details that do massive amounts of work. It should be given to creative writing undergraduates for exactly that reason.

In this, the second volume of a projected Manchester trilogy, the young writer takes a zero-hours job in a mail-sorting depot but struggles to cope with the demands of menial work and the attitudes of his colleagues. Only after rescuing and acquiring a pet tortoise does he realise what is most lacking in his life: intimacy. Embarking on a handful of sexual misadventures, he continues to struggle as a writer. He sees the city in which he was born and brought up changing all around him and, when he gets sacked from the sorting office, some hard choices lie ahead.

A powerful indictment of austerity politics and Brexit Britain, the novel never loses sight of its working-class characters’ dignity and humanity, and Campbell’s mordantly witty dialogue ensures that the next laugh is never far away. Gripping in its fascination with the everyday, Zero Hours is keenly observed, blackly funny and ultimately uplifting.