Vulgar Things by Lee Rourke

After losing his job, and getting drunk, Jon Michaels finds out that his Uncle Rey has died and is persuaded to travel to Canvey and sort through Rey’s personal effects. Jon stays in his uncle’s caravan and discovers recordings, a telescope, letters – things that fracture everything he’d assumed about his life.

Vulgar Things is an odyssey firmly rooted in and around Southend. Rourke’s landscape is not the familiarly romanticised sea, but rather the bleak beauty of grey waves and scrubland. I’m from Essex myself and my parents now live on the Garrison in Shoeburyness (which gets a brief mention) – Southend is a place I know well and it was refreshing to read a novel set there. It made me realise how unheard that voice is and how far away from the TOWIE stereotype much of Essex actually is. The real Southend can be pretty brutal, incredibly sweary, seedy, grubby, violent – drunks and sex workers mingle with day trippers, old folk, families and school kids. Rourke captures this well as Jon walks back and forth from Canvey to Southend, the repetition of the journey, the landmarks he passes, building into the readers consciousness so we feel we’re walking alongside him.  Alcohol is central to the novel, as is the crackle of violence. Jon’s obsession with a woman he briefly meets is part of a deeper story – his character seemingly doomed to repeat a narrative originally played out by his uncle. The woman is wanted not for who she is but for who he imagines her to be. Even the wide Canvey sky bright with stars and planets transforms from reassuring to dizzying, disconcerting, worrying.

The whole novel has a claustrophobic feel despite the sea and skyscapes. The contained life Uncle Rey led in his tiny caravan bleeds into the present day. Jon visits the local pub “The Lobster Smack”, goes on walks with his trusty stick, obsesses over Laura, watches tapes of his Uncle reading from his novel, recorded in the same caravan, over and over. It feels airless and yet the story itself is compelling and I read on, eagerly trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together.

It’s deeply frustrating to feel my mind battle its own limitations. I knew there were layers to the story that I was missing, intentions that went whoosh over my head. Anyway, there’s a brilliantly illuminating interview over at The Quietus that anyone who is interested should go and read. Smarter folk than me etcetera. (Ah, right, Petrarch & Laura!)

Do come back tomorrow if you are interested in knowing what superhero power Lee Rourke would have and what colour he thinks Tuesdays are (Always asking the tough questions). #SmashLits