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Irish Examiner

Book review: Do not put this book on hold

I have long suspected it's the independent presses that are printing the most interesting, daring, and inventive fiction around. Published by Indigo Press, Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes — the sophomore offering from Katharina Volckmer — certainly supports this suspicion. Our protagonist, Jimmie, works the late shift on a zero-hours contract in a soul-crushing London call centre — half-listening to disgruntled holidaymakers rant about a hair on their pillow or too much sand in their drawers. The novel compactly follows Jimmie through a single workday, where a scheduled meeting with his supervisor looms over the narrative, leaving us to wonder if his increasingly bizarre disengagement from the job might have finally backfired. A drama school graduate and part-time clown who imagines backgrounds and castings for the people on the other end of the line, Jimmie has little time for annoying customers but treats the vulnerable with a poignant tenderness — while exposing everyone to his Wildean wit and meandering digressions. Volckmer's canvas is satire, although anyone who has slogged through a customer service job or waited an inordinate amount of time to talk to someone who cannot actually help, will recognise how close we are to reality here. Jimmie's acts of defiance include muting his telephone, donning his mother's lipstick, and drawing genitalia on his deskmate's notepad. He has no desire to occupy a higher position but resents that management are allowed to forgo the ugly company hoodie and sit on chairs that have armrests. In hilarious dialogue and inner monologue, scathing observations on everything from late capitalism to wellness culture punctuate Volckmer's animated prose: 'In this new world nothing was tangible, and when Jimmie couldn't breathe he only had his lack of self-care to blame.' The majority of the jokes land and, for the most part, Jimmie's generalisations are either valid or good natured: 'Italians all wore the same puffa jacket in winter' made me laugh out loud. Still, others, particularly in relation to his appearance, feel a little cheap in a story ablaze with wisdom. I tend to steel myself when I see the word 'transgressive' attached to a modern writer's work, preparing for material so preoccupied with disruption that it becomes untethered from fundamentals. This worry is unfounded with Volckmer, a master of pace with a talent for creating captivatingly flawed characters. An eclectic cast of co-workers, who provide connections both platonic and passionate, are brilliantly rendered. In the novel's claustrophobic, communal interior, windows offer solace and hope for the future, doors deliver comfort from the life currently being endured, even if it is temporary; 'a knock on the door, the loose bolt shaking like a lost promise'. Dismissed by acquaintances as an oddball, to the reader Jimmie is a quiet rebel, a philosophical, imaginative thinker just trying to make it through another workday. He is also a fantasist, and beneath the novel's humour lies an unsettling undercurrent that lingers. Yet, despite its bleak backdrop, Calls May Be Recorded… ultimately offers optimism amidst society's strain. As Jimmie remarks: 'The only real revolution is to be happy in spite of your circumstances.' This is fresh, highly considered work, from a writer deserving of the praise garnered for her debut. Her follow-up more than delivers, and cements Volckmer as a beguiling voice in literary fiction. For fans of irreverent novels from the likes of Ottessa Moshfegh and Fien Veldman, or cult TV comedy such as Peep Show, this pithy, delightfully peculiar book would prove the ideal holiday companion — possible to enjoy in the combined amount of time you may have spent listening to looping hold music on your phone this year.