Sticky situations

Never Never

Eric is a debt counsellor (as Gaffney himself once was) whose days at the Cleator Moor Money Advice Shop in west Cumbria are spent helping anxious debtors avoid making payments. Mired in more debt than most of the clients he counsels, Eric maintains a façade of easy solvency for his girlfriend, Charlotte, while sneaking off to Manchester to feel alive again, to borrow some more cash from various shady characters, and to have peculiar sexual encounters with his first love, Julie.

Gaffney's strength is creating strong characters, and this debut brims with them - Doreen, the spendthrift housewife; Mr Shopaloan, a creditor-turned-debtor; Charlotte, brilliantly irritating in a way that is difficult to define; and a sinister man dressed as a lemon who may or may not be responsible for the spate of caravan photographs Eric has been receiving, each with a single, gnomic word pasted on the back.

With a ruthless eye and pitch-black humour, Gaffney explores a consumer culture in which exploiting the welfare system is both a necessity and an addiction, and in which hypocrisy is endemic. This clever novel couldn't be more timely - it forces us to confront society's insatiable thirst for credit, and our own sense of entitlement.

Francesca Segal