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.

Genre: Literary Fiction

"Rourke is on his way to becoming the J.G Ballard of Southend-on-Sea." - Deborah Levy