Zero Hours

The Manchester Trilogy #2

by Neil Campbell

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.

Genres: Fiction

138 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2018

Reviews

[Phillip Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zero Hours reminded me of JM Coetzee's Youth , if Coetzee had been a working class Manchester lad trying to make his way in a world of temporary, menial, zero-hours jobs, Tory-austerity, and Brexit bigotry - and also to make his mark as a writer.

As well as political awareness, Zero Hours is loaded with realistic characters, literary nods and mordant humour. Having been taken on by a small publisher he has to try and promote his latest book himself: 'What's it about?' a member of staff asks him before a reading in a local bookshop, 'is it like crime or ...'

'Literary fiction.'
'Literary fiction?'
'Yes.'
'Okay, well, good luck with that.'
'Will there be any wine?'
'Wine?'
'Yes, wine.'
'No, that's for proper writers. I mean, the well-known ones, you know. You're replacing Val McDermid, aren't you?'
'Well, she's not well, I believe.'
'There would have been wine for Val McDermid.'

Neil Campbell's first novel Sky Hooks seemed a little lacking in direction to me, but in Zero Hours his writing seems to get better as it goes along, it is very disappointing that it was overlooked by this year's Booker Prize judges (including the Val McDermid) who found room for at least one motiveless novel that hinged on unrealistic behaviour from start to finish.

But Alan Sillitoe never got an invite to the Booker Prize scene either, and Coetzee never turns up. Isn't it the writers who plough their own furrow that plant the seeds that grow the grapes that make the wine that the posh bingo set guzzle while whinging about Amazon?

Zero Hours is a sardonic rebuke to the lack of working-class voices in English literary fiction, and it is de rigueur at this point to cite something George Orwell wrote in 1940: "If you look for the working classes in fiction, and especially English fiction, all you will find is a hole." But maybe if he had looked closer he would have seen someone in that hole: digging, planting - but probably not listening to Aunty Beeb. As Neil Campbell, narrator/author puts it:

Open Book, Bookclub, Front Row, I couldn't listen to any of those programmes without having my love of literature damaged. They never talked about writers I loved or books I liked, and when they did talk it just sounded like bollocks to me. Everyone on Radio 4 talked in posh accents that alienated me from the start. People waffling on about books, academics adding a layer of bullshit to a perfectly accessible novel, and writers, positioning themselves cleverly in relation to their published output. Careerists, not artists. Peope just there to compete with others in terms of intelligence. Just read the book and shut the fuck up, that was my attitude.

That Orwell line was also quoted by Val McDermid in A Point of View on Radio 4 last week, in which she also claimed that readers of crime fiction are "the best informed and most engaged with the world around them because the books they read consistently explore contemporary issues and constantly challenge their views." I'm not convinced. I still suspect that crime fiction reinforces fear of violence, particularly amongst older readers, but I digress. Maybe Neil Campbell's third novel will see him switching to writing crime fiction and becoming successful - then maybe there will be wine for him too. Beer tastes better though.

[Roz DeKett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book is well worth the read. It feels much more like a memoir than a novel (the unnamed main character, a writer, has published the same stories in the same places as the author, and when the character is asked what he writes about he replies 'Kind of autobiographical. Just change the names'; the book also contains passages of commentary on topics from current events to the publishing industry to new buildings that definitely feel like a dip into the author's own opinions and did slightly break the feeling of being in the character's head for me). That said, I worked in Manchester for five years and it's right here on these pages, detail by detail. Zero Hours (named for those contracts that lock people to jobs without the promise of even an hour of paid labour) digs beneath the surface of people's lives with wry dialogue and meticulous observation; the writing pulled me in so subtly that only as I reached the final pages did its full poignant impact make itself felt.
This is the second novel in a planned Manchester trilogy; I haven't read the first, Sky Hooks, but that didn't seem to matter. Zero Hours stands on its own.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raymond Carver meets Ken Loach in this plain-speaking account of a young working-class writer battling the passive-aggression and mundanity of the dead-end, zero-hours jobs he must do to survive. Campbell's work is best when it depicts highly convincing scenes of conflict straight out of Brexit Britain, especially the misplaced anger and dangerous misinformation that becomes apparent from such exchanges. Writing with a strong sense of place, there are also some great vignettes in the many bars and pubs of Manchester to be enjoyed. However, this book suffered from one too many passages given over to writerly navel-gazing and Bukowski worship. I'd like to see Campbell ditch the autobiographical in future works, as I think he has a great eye for human behaviour in the midst of the current political climate in this evermore divided nation.

[Gretel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pitch-perfect.