LEE ROURKE
DIALOGUE FROM A NOVEL ALREADY WRITTEN
“I think I like it out here because everything seems still, there’s hardly any movement, everything seems stationary . . . I like that.”
“What’s down below, under the waves, down underneath, through the planks of wood, beneath the dirty water, beneath all of this? . . .”
“I don’t really think of much, I just look at the sky, the shape of things . . .”
“I enjoy the silence, I guess. I like it that way, not too many families walk all the way out here, it’s too long, and when the train isn’t working, it’s near empty. That’s the best time, for me, when no one else can get here . . . But it’ll all end. It’s not always going to be like this. Our time here, however we use it, is limited.”
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Lee Rourke is the author of the critically acclaimed novel THE CANAL (winner of The Guardian’s Not The Booker 2010), the short story collection EVERYDAY and a work of non-fiction A BRIEF HISTORY OF FABLES: FROM AESOP TO FLASH FICTION. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at Kingston University, London.