Word Spaces (19): Lee Rourke
We bought this place in east London last year. The study isn’t finished yet, so I do most of my writing on the dining room table. It mostly always looks like this – unless our two cats have been on the table and knocked the books on to the floor, which is something they do from time to time. I know they enjoy doing this when I am out of the room. It doesn’t bother me that much, because cats will be cats. I didn’t write The Canal in this room; we moved here after I had finished it. I wrote The Canal in various cafés and pubs in Hackney, east London and I’m afraid I didn’t take photos of them.
I write longhand and then edit as I type it up on to my laptop. My laptop is quite old now and sometimes gets very tired, but it still does the job, so I can’t really complain. READ MORE >
24 Comments
August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
August 13th, 2010 / 11:44 am
Interview with Lee Rourke
Lee Rouke’s debut novel, The Canal has just been released in the the States and will be hitting the UK in less than a month. I’ve already said good things about it & so have Shane Jones & John Wray . I conducted this little interview with Lee over email.
First, an excerpt, then another after the interview:
She addressed him only.
“Do you remember me?”
There was a long pause.
He looked at the woman next to him, then back at her, then back at the woman. He looked nervous, rubbing his thumb into the palm of his hand. The woman’s eyes began to narrow and her whole face started to contort. He looked back up at her.
“Er . . . I’m . . . afraid . . . I’m afraid I don’t, sorry. Er . . . Have we . . . Should I?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve never seen you before in my life. I fear you may have mistaken me for another person, someone else in your life . . . I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sorry? That’s all you can say? Sorry? Don’t you remember me at all?”
Lee Rourke in New York
All you Brooklyn dwellers should come out to Melville House tonight and be the first kids on the F train to read Lee Rourke’s The Canal, a strange explosion of a book that is out as of today. Lee is in town from London & there will be a launch party tonight at Melville’s space in Dumbo, complete with a reading, beer, wine, snacks and people. 7 pm. 145 Plymouth St. Come say hi.
An interview I did with Lee will be posted here in the not so distant future. Today? Tomorrow? Who can be sure?