Vulgar Things

The second novel from Lee Rourke, author of the cult hit ‘The Canal’.

Jon Michaels – a divorced, disaffected and fatigued editor living a nondescript life in North London – wakes one morning to a phone call informing him that his uncle has been found dead in his caravan on Canvey Island. Dismissed from his job only the day before and hung-over, Jon reluctantly agrees to sort through his uncle’s belongings and clear out the caravan. What follows is a quixotic week on Canvey as Jon, led on by desire and delusion, purposeful but increasingly disorientated, unfolds a disturbing secret, ever more enchanted by the island – its landscape and its atmosphere.

Haunted and haunting, ‘Vulgar Things’ is part mystery, part romance, part odyssey: a novel in which the menial entrances and the banal compels.

Lee Rourke is the author of the short-story collection ‘Everyday’, the novel ‘The Canal’ (winner of the Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2010) and the poetry collection ‘Varroa Destructor’. He is Writer-in-Residence at Kingston University, where he is an MFA lecturer in creative writing and critical theory. He lives by the sea. Follow him on Twitter: @leerourke