To The Canal with Lee Rourke

I don’t attend many book launches, and those I do go to tend to be Legend events, so it was interesting last night to be at the launch of Lee Rourke’s first novel, "The Canal", at trendy boutique bookshop “To Hell With Books” in Bloomsbury.

The launch was good fun, and Lee gave everyone a taster of the book, which is about a guy sitting down by the Regents Canal and watching the world go by. I like the sound of it, and not only because I know that stretch between Islington and Hackney pretty well; I like the sound of a book in which apparently not much happens. As my creative writing tutor, John McAuliffe once said, there aren’t enough books around in which not much happens. At least I think that’s what he said – I wasn’t really paying attention.

As part of the launch, Lee was “interviewed” by literary critic Stuart Evers, which was an intriguing idea, particularly as some of the questions were a bit tougher than one might expect under the circumstances. On leaving, a copy of the book safely under my arm, I was tempted to lean in and tell Lee that your first book launch is probably one of the worst moments of your life, but it gets better after that. But I didn’t.