Odd Hours

'This wove a spell on me' Marian Keyes

'F***ing brilliant' Daisy May Cooper

Meet Gosia.

She's a sensitive soul with a filthy mind and problems with intimacy.

Between shifts in a well-lit budget supermarket and nights in a badly lit Zone 3 flatshare, she spends hours inside her own head. That is, until a chance encounter snaps her out of her reverie.

Propelled into a series of mediocre jobs, lousy dates and even worse sex, the prickly yet warm-hearted Gosia begins her excavation of the 'perfect' life so many dream of.

After all, could there be more to it than she imagined?

Raw, funny, mean and moving, Odd Hours is a razor-sharp social comedy about human connection, unexpected happiness, and the many forms of love.

'A hymn to normality and an absolute joy to read' Sarah May

'Compelling, surprising, funny' Kate Sawyer

'Bas writes so well about that state of being young and trying so hard to make connections' Marianne Levy

'Dark, sharply funny and utterly rewarding ... Reminded me of the brilliant books by Kirsty Capes ... Highly recommended' Liz Hyder

“'Dark, sharply funny and utterly rewarding ... Reminded me of the brilliant books by Kirsty Capes ... Highly recommended'”

-- Liz Hyder
'This enigmatic and idiosyncratic gem is eccentric, quirky and utterly original' -- Kevin O'Sullivan (Irish Examiner Book of 2022)
'Bas writes so well about that state of being young and trying so hard to make connections' -- Marianne Levy
'Odd Hours is a brilliant satire on the struggles of life in the zero-hours sector ... An auspicious debut' -- Paul Mendez

Ania Bas grew up in Poland and moved to the UK 15 years ago to pursue a career in the arts. She has worked with Tate, Whitechapel Gallery and others as an artist and arts organiser. She began writing Odd Hours on the Faber Academy 'Writing a Novel' course.

Odd Hours is a whip-smart social comedy for those of us who feel that life is a game where someone else has stolen the rules... ' Odd Hours wove a spell on me, by the end my heart was VERY full of love and happiness' - Marian Keyes For Gosia, life is something that happens to other people. About to turn thirty, she works as a cashier in a large supermarket and shares a flat in London's Zone 3 with Lyndsey, a judgemental beautician who keeps a diary - Gosia's favourite reading material. When the man of her dreams sidles up to her checkout, the quest for his affections propels Gosia to do things she has never done before. Quitting her job to become a personal trainer, she makes a very unlikely friend in Steve, invests in a self-help bible, ups her romance skills by going on practice dates, travels back to Poland, falls out with her mother and loses her job. The novel carries us through suburban London, with its cheap cafes, depressing supermarkets, understaffed libraries, second-rate gyms and drab, rental flats. Sharp, discerning, tender and original, Ania celebrates the unknown and imperfect routes to happiness and fulfilment in a timely excavation of the myth of a perfect life.

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