Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes

Should we really ever bring our whole selves to work?

In a London call centre, Jimmie helps holiday makers with myriad problems, but he is hardly a model employee. He doesn't simply provide customer service to his clients and advice to his colleagues, he gets involved in their fantasies and frustrations, and now he's about to be hauled up in front of the boss.

From perfecting his roles as an undertaker and as a clown to performing duties above and beyond his employment contract, he debates the importance of the optimum shade for lipstick and bathroom walls, the pros and cons of nudist versus textile, as well as the psychological impacts of an Italian mother and an emotional support animal. This is the second, ribald, scatological novel from the brilliant author of The Appointment. Jimmie's sly, sharp, melancholy insights into the indignities of a world which aims to eliminate the human will make you laugh, weep and never look the same way at an electric carving knife again.

'This book is filled with brilliant dialogue, unexpected turns, some very dirty talk with sudden bursts of hilarity, and then fierce sadness. It exudes dark energy. It is highly original. It gives pleasure on every page.' Colm Tibn, author of Brooklyn and Long Island

'Raucous, incisive and wholly original.' Eley Williams, author of Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good

'Her work is a hand grenade thrown against the falsities of good taste.' Carlos Fonseca, author of Austral

'Katharina Volckmer's jokes are always consequential, and her novel ends up saying much that is profound about work and isolation and capitalist estrangement.' Lily Isaacs, The TLS