The Manchester Trilogy

Neil Campbell's Sky Hooks is an unsentimental but empathetic and heartfelt book about an ordinary man who could've been a contender, a football prodigy whose destiny was irreparably waylaid by injury. It is a book about a working class Mancunian negotiating, in a kind of sustained daze, the pieces of a life subtly shattered by destiny, and how he takes those pieces and tentatively, waywardly, turns himself into someone else. -- Colin Barrett

Sky hooks are like glass hammers and bubbles from spirit levels, things you get asked to find on your first day in a warehouse. In this case it is also a metaphor for dreams. Set in contemporary Manchester this story is about a lad who was on the books at City but got injured and never made it. It is a compelling coming of age tale.

A young warehouseman, his promising football career cut short by injury, counts flanges, valves and couplings for a living. He longs for the warmth and women of the office, but the prostitutes who hang around the high-rise are easier to deal with. Drink provides relief, if not escape, and probably the last thing he should dream of becoming is a writer, but then he buys himself a note pad and pen.

This debut novel by Neil Campbell, author of the short story collections Broken Doll and Pictures From Hopper, is a moving and darkly comic meditation on the challenge of trying to realise dreams in a harsh and unfair world.