Jon Michaels – a divorced, disinterested and fatigued editor living a nondescript life in North London – receives a sudden phone call from his brother, informing him that their estranged uncle Rey has been found dead in his caravan on Canvey Island. Recently sacked from his job, carrying a hangover from hell and craving some sort of escape, Jon reluctantly agrees to spend the week on the island to sort through his uncle’s belongings. Vulgar Things follows Jon as he unearths a disturbing family secret while losing himself in the strangely alluring landscape.
I really enjoyed this, Vulgar Things is one of those immersive reads that, when you put it down for a bit, you convince yourself its somehow carrying on without you. I was completely swept away by Jon’s week in the wilderness and the chaos and confusion that ensues.
The plot was good, no big surprises where the reveals are concerned, but the interplay between characters is brilliantly mysterious and at times stifling.
But for me the story was of secondary significance. What I enjoyed most about this book was Rourke’s grip on Southend. He has that place squeezed tight in his fist and is hell-bent on ringing out all its beauty and blackness.
I grew up in Essex and have spent a lot of impressionable years ducking around its various towns and (now) cities. It has always struck me as a very strange and unsettling place. You can spend days winding in and out of throbbing countryside, pulsing shorelines and stretch your eyes across acre and acre of meadow and field. But take a wrong turn and you can find yourself in the bleakest corner of England, only ever ten feet away from confrontation or insult.
Rourke gets this riot between nature and simmering small town aggression brilliantly. My skin prickled countless times at his descriptions of those tense Essex nights where every figure you pass, every shadow, hums with threat.
This book sums up the bizarre feeling of claustrophobia I get in Southend, especially on the pier, where even an expanse of sea, bobbing all around you with promise, can’t help shake the encroaching anticipation of something nasty.
A great book and a writer I will definitely be following in the future.
Book info:
- ISBN: 9780007542512
- Published by 4th Estate, July 2014
- Sent copy of book by publisher, thanks very much!