Set in the basement of a fading department store, Jess Cole's novel Retail Therapy crafts a vivid portrait of working life on the crumbling high street, an environment in which ambition collides with corporate indifference, and identity is both a performance and a commodity.
Retail Therapy is a meditation on consumerism, survival and self-worth in an era of economic decline. The novel follows the HOTshop GIRLS as they navigate shifting sales tactics, impossible targets, and the slow erosion of their own aspirations. Between stockroom politics, relentless corporate oversight, and the absurd logic of retail, they carve out moments of wit, camaraderie and fleeting resistance against a system designed to wear them down.
Worms, 178pp, 11cm x 18cm, paperback, 2025