Zero Hours: Book 2 (Manchester Trilogy)

A 21st century Mancunian take on Post Office by Charles Bukowski. If you liked Post Office then you'll almost certainly like this.

Campbell's narrator is a young working-class man from Manchester. Throughout the novel he works a number of zero hours jobs, first at a mail-sorting depot, later at a number of libraries. There is nearly always something to dishearten our man, be it his duties, colleagues, managers, or just the constant uncertainty that comes with this kind of employment. Besides work, the narrator has a number of unsuccessful attempts at relationships, and sees the face of his city change, losing its character to gentrification. There's a stop-start feel to reading the novel itself: as with zero hours work, the present moment is all, and even the immediate future uncertain.

Campbell is a realist writer, and Zero Hours is probably even more true to life and purposefully undramatic than its predecessor. And this is no bad thing, because he is a poet with a knack for describing ordinary episodes that strike an expectedly emotional chord. He is also deeply concerned with place and the indelible imprint left on a person by the sites that represent lodestones of their past.

Zero Hours is the second volume of Neil Campbell's Manchester trilogy. Honestly, if ever a novel deserved literary accolades and bouquets it's this one. Zero Hours possesses more energy, grind and determination than a decade of Bookers. If there was any justice it should be jumping off the bookshelves.