The Warren is the untold story of the underclass in modern day Britain. It is a multi-narrative story, told in vignettes, punctuated by larger chapters where the characters' stories come together, overlap and interact in different ways. A fiction that is very much a reality.
Throughout my time working closely with people that the Job Centre deemed unemployable, I forged close connections with a variety of people in a particular area of poverty and through this deep understanding, realised that it was time for them to get representation. That they are no longer forgotten. Swept under the carpet. Ignored.
As well as English teacher, I was counsellor, drug worker, advisor and friend.
The novel is told directly from the characters’ perspective, pulling you in and immersing you in their world through the directness of the narrative. Using some more experimental techniques to add a lucidness to the prose that flows easily from sentence to sentence.
The characters all live in the same block of flats. They are all isolated and unemployed. They are all looking for answers of some kind. To work things out. To find out where their lives went wrong and to try and put them back on track. But is it too late? Is there a state driven fate that dictates their lives or can they find the answers that they’re looking for?
The Tombstone that is Warren Court: an Exerpt
The flats lay there. Not a rising magnificent tombstone, one of many in a vast cityscape; no. It’s smaller. Much smaller. An underwhelming, bland and stunted building, still bigger than the surrounding town but a poor effort to imitate the cities. And as the council houses got sold off one by one the tenants in these flats never got offered and never asked if they could buy theirs’. Only essential maintenance was carried out from the start. The banister that runs down the front steps to the entrance is white with chips of paints missing and names scored in by passing children; even they understand that this place is a fiction. A place that people talk about but have never made a reality. The events discussed like last night’s telly.
The hallways were made to look like a hospital’s yet now they resemble the wreckages of a ship. There’s no lift and the stairways have tight halls that suffocate the dwellers as they clamber up and down; their exercise regime.
Some doors have numbers, some have black boot-marks, others ajar with no handles and a circular hole where the door knob would once have been. Through these doors you can hear children scream, running frantic, and smell the dirty nappies and thick smoke that permeates this level’s hallways.
Other levels have wobbly baselines shaking the walls, voices raised, TVs blearing, sticky globules dotted on the walls, up until you get to the top floor. Here there’s silence. The top floor inhabitants try not to leave unless they have to.
On the roof there are beer cans littered that rustle like leaves in autumn and roach ends that lay on top like flakes of snow. Here you can see out over the town. Closest are the charity shops and bookies that fill the High Street, broken up by a pharmacy, a bank, a Post Office; these others aren’t needed by the inhabitants of Warren Court. Even The Bull and Butcher is only frequented by those of a certain disposition and they will only usually go throughout the daytime. The night time is full of day-workers.
Behind this are the slag heaps that are now green and have trees lined up them for the retired dog walkers. The rows of terraced pit-houses are all boarded up and scheduled for demolition. Children play games there, running around and hiding, jumping over burning cables through the thick black smoke of their rubber casings whilst men scour for any scrap that hasn’t already been taken.
This was Stanton and still is. This fiction is their reality.