Morvern Callar Paperback – 2 May 1996

Scot Alan Warner’s 1995 debut novel really is quite unlike anything I can recall reading. Frequently rambling and discursive, but with a haunting, dream-like quality that is particularly memorable, Warner’s titular character wakes one day to find her boyfriend has committed suicide, an event that sets in train a fortuitous change in 21-year old Morvern’s seemingly otherwise mundane existence. Warner’s tale is a contemporary one, evoking the loneliness of life in a remote small town (here, based on the Highland coastal town of Oban, near to Warner’s 'home patch’), but also that of localised youth culture – here, 1990s rave culture, depicted via Morvern’s ever-present Walkman playlist and her subsequent holiday visits to the haunts of Spanish tourist resorts. Warner’s writing style is certainly an acquired taste, narrative-light and often repetitive, but getting to the heart (via his first-person narrative) of his lead character, whose sense of self-determination, independence and detachment from events going on around her, leads to Morvern assuming the mantle of a rather original literary creation. The novel’s submergence in rebellious, impetuous, hedonistic youth culture and its use of vernacular/slang called to my mind other original, diverse works such as The Catcher In The Rye, A Clockwork Orange and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner and whilst Warner’s novel in not (for me) quite in this league, it is a highly original and evocative piece of writing.

Absolutely loved this novel, it is edgy and has a vernacular spectacular, the narrative and narrator are one becoming undone. Particularly liked the café scenes, the night swim, to make the supermarket of former employment even ever more grim. In the end you are really pleased she had a chance to let her nails grow and flourish and for a while glow. But of course the tribute lay's to the writer who dreamed a world shady but brighter, a truly magnificent thing, a novel that captures the sorrow and lament of a life left because of financial constraint and so much more.

Wholly original in both the manner of it's telling and showing as well as in the conception and development of the book itself, this adds to the oeuvre of Warner in no small degree. Previously I've read two of his books: he has written about a group of teenaged girls on a choir spree, (not the gangster series) title:  The Sopranos , and about an ageing Spanish roué in  The Worms Can Carry Me To Heaven , and I fully intend to read his other books. This one stays mostly in Scotland with occasional forays to Spanish Rave heaven. It begins with a shocking death and carries on with actions that seem almost incapable of explanation.Throughout, Warner is consistent in his inconsistency, his grammar filched from some inner corner of his protagonist's understanding. Eg: "I slid my foot to the left. You felt the whole side of a face lay against my bare back, between shoulder blades. It was still part of our dance... You didn't really have your body as your own, it was part of the dance, the music, the rave." This kind of conjunction, slipping from first to second person, sometimes within one sentence is deliberate, to signify, perhaps, the autism of Morvern's reactions and feelings. Not that I mean these are pathological, or ascribable to some condition, but that it is how she feels habitually - she slides from herself to herself experienced as something outside of herself. This kind of slippage is by no means confined to Rave activities. It's effect is to charge the book with a kind of deliberate sense that Morvern is not like anyone else. Indeed, some of the early sections are almost hallucinatory in that they involve activities that would fit in perfectly in another kind of book altogether, but don't fit in with this one. It is a most extraordinary book. Towards it's end I was flagging under the continuation of affectless description. Eg: "I skinned the flesh from each olive with my two top front teeth so if you fished the olive out you could see the little square cuts on it. After I'd bitten off most of the flesh, my tongue passed the stone further back in my mouth where I rubbed the rest off. Then I sucked the stone with its sharp little ridge before popping it out on my hand and lining it up with the other stones." There is much more of this kind of thing than one could ever need. But what Warner has done with this galaxy of detail is capture perfectly the strangeness of Morvern Caller's perfectly ordinary, yet extraordinary, existence. It is a feat of determination and to be admired, at a distance, perhaps, like a long dream that you are certain holds meaning for you of an urgent, life-changing nature, if only you had its key. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to be challenged as s/he reads.

This is a very original and rewarding novel. Morvern's narration is engrossing despite her attention to minute detail and fondness for creating lists. She is a young working-class woman who isn't just a compilation of the usual cliches. She is an anti-hero but you have to sympathise with her attempt to create a better life for herself. Thoroughly recommended.

Watched the film and thought the book would tell me so much more. For a small book it certainly packs a punch, a strange mixture of debauched youth, small town mentality and humour mixed with very sensitive love of place and nature.

There are not many books that read like this one, it really has a voice.Written in the first person, Alan Warner lets you get inside the head of Morven Caller, and I ended up quite liking her. As a character she is both believable, and unbelievable at the same time, but she rings true.I haven't seen the film, but I don't quite see how any of this could be successfully captured in a movie.

This is an excellent novel. It's a very memorable story with an interesting main character.

Riveting and realistic writing on the Scottish under-class of Oban or some such place. But marred by nagging doubts that the author doesn't understand the logic of what he is describing, nor the real implications of such poverty of options for those trapped within it.