Anthony Cummins
Ile de Rey
Vulgar Things
By Lee Rourke
Fourth Estate 232pp £14.99
The themes of the Mancunian writer Lee Rourke are boredom, disaffection and urban decay. Asked in an interview why he chose not to name the narrator of his previous novel, The Canal (2010), Rourke cited his wish to rebel against ‘established literary fiction’ and its ‘self-congratulatory mish-mash of plot and characterisation’. The Canal was about a man who quits his job to do nothing but sit on a bench beside the stretch of water that runs between Hackney and Islington. Like all Rourke’s work to date, it was published by a small press. With Vulgar Things – a metafictional mystery involving an out-of-work editor who discovers he isn’t who he thinks he is – Rourke now shares a publisher with Jonathan Franzen. The narrator has a name.
Admirers may rest assured that in other respects Rourke has not sold out. Jon Michaels has just got the sack from a job he hates (see?) when his brother rings to say that their uncle, Rey, committed suicide one week earlier. It falls to Jon to leave London to clear
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
This and two more newly available pieces from our October 1984 issue in our From the Archives newsletter. Sign up on our website so you never miss another dispatch.
Congratulations to @HanKangOfficial, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024.
We've lifted the paywall on Joanna Kavenna's review of The White Book from November 2017.
Joanna Kavenna - Carte Blanche
Joanna Kavenna: Carte Blanche - The White Book by Han Kang (Translated by Deborah Smith)
literaryreview.co.uk
Few surveys of British art exist. Those that do have given disproportionate space to recent trends and neglected the 150 years between Hogarth and Turner.
@robinsimonbaj examines what launched British artists of this era into the European stratosphere.
Robin Simon - The Wright Stuff
Robin Simon: The Wright Stuff - The Invention of British Art by Bendor Grosvenor
literaryreview.co.uk