Career Break: A humorous novel about marriage, work and the mid-life crisis.

Joe ‘Jimmy’ Hendrick, thirty-nine, husband to Jane and father to Tom, is a middle-ranking civil servant with an expanding waistline, a receding hairline, and a desperate desire to escape his monotonous life. Every day he commutes from his home in Harrow to his cubicle on the seventh floor of a faceless building in Victoria Street, where he has worked in the exact same job for the previous ten years without promotion or pay rise. He spends his working hours day-dreaming about breaking free and devoting his life to a more fulfilling cause, but a combination of inertia and fear always seem to get the better of him…until the day he is suspended from work.

Finding himself temporarily unemployed, and with four weeks to kill until his investigation hearing, Jimmy embarks upon a quest to find his dream career; a career that will finally give him the satisfaction he craves, allowing him to be at peace with himself and his place in the world. Unfortunately for Jimmy, the journey is not without its fair share of roadblocks...

Career Break is a darkly humorous tale about a thirty-something man embarking upon a journey of self-discovery. Both poignant and funny, the story delves into the vagaries of the male psyche as it approaches middle-age, exploring some of the anxieties and fears that many men encounter at some point in their lives.

The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy the work of Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons and David Nicholls; accessible fiction that successfully crosses genres including lad-lit, romance and comedy.