Morvern Callar [Paperback]

Morvern Callar is revolting. Throughout the entire novel, she doesn't lift a finger to help anyone unless it meets some greater need of her own. She expects other people to fit in with her lifestyle. She begs, steals, lies, fights and sleeps around. She chain-smokes Silk Cuts and gets mortal on diluted vodka. Between binges, she graces customers with her presence in the local supermarket. Yet despite everything, this young, selfish wastrel is strangely beguiling.

Morvern is an orphan, named after the Morvern Peninsula, a bleak and unpopulated lump of land overlooking the port of Oban. Her foster father, Red Hanna, is a trade unionist on the railway who likes being a medium sized fish in a small pond. And as small ponds go, Oban is pretty unadventurous. A town famous for its folly and its distillery, the ferries out to the islands, and being the end of the railway line. Morvern and her friends speak a strange, Argyllshire dialect of Scots and the older ones still speak Gaelic. They use this quaint speech to articulate their breathtaking lack of ambition, their lack of understanding or interest in the wider world, and their lack of compassion for one another. Alan Warner grew up in Oban and he convinces completely in his depiction of real life behind the touristy façade.

Alan Warner brings in repeated references to dance music - at times Morvern sets out the contents of mix-tapes she has made - and there are scenes at raves and parties. Yet for all this, there is an overwhelming sense of silence about the book. There are conversations but nobody ever says anything meaningful. We follow Morvern's inner monologue at times but it contains very few ideas and the odd occasional spark is quickly doused. Even when Morvern sobers up enough to see that fate has dealt her double aces, she focuses only on immediate gratification rather than strategic, long-term planning. It's hard to watch someone make so many, and such obvious, mistakes. Despite her unloveliness, the reader wants Morvern to make a right choice somewhere - the reader carries the torch of hope that Morvern is unable to hold for herself.

At times, the novel is tricky to follow. Scenes shift with little warning; time passes unnoticed. It does all make sense, though, and the discontinuities are all made clear within a few pages. And the Scots dialect does take some getting attuned to. But once in the swing of things, the reader can see that this is a beautiful, subtle book that defies expectations. It's also a surprisingly funny book, with laugh out loud mentions of the Kale Onion, Creeping Jesus, the driving examiner and bloke-swapping on the plane to Spain.

The ending sits oddly with the rest of the book - injecting a dose of the serious into proceedings. I wish I could say it is a hopeful ending, but mostly it is just very bleak.

I would definitely recommend this book if you are looking for atmosphere rather than fast-paced action. Not that it doesn't have a plot - it start with an in-your-face suicide scene, for example - but that's not what makes it stand out.

Alan Warner never writes about what Morvern feels, only what she does. Weirdly enough, this matter-of-fact style only underlines the lyricism of his imagery: drunken nights in a Scottish marina, stacking shelves in the supermarket, raving in Spain - all of these rather banal things take on a poetry of their own.

The sleeve of the book called Morvern amoral - that wasn't my impression at all. She just makes the best of things. Her best friend and her lover both let her down in different ways, but the cool thing about Morvern is that she never gets weepy or obsessive about what life throws at her. I call that brave, not amoral. It seems as though the author fell in love with his own main character whilst writing, which would have been bad news if she hadn't been intriguing enough to do make the reader do the same. She is, so that's OK.

According to other reviews on this page, the book is very authentic - it certainly felt that way to me. A guy writing from a girls' perspective is bound to get the wrong end of the stick sometimes, though (I think some other girl picked up on this as well!), and I have admit that did happen to Alan Warner as well. Especially the lesbian action seemed more of a fantasy than a reality - but no worries, it sort of fitted with the dreamlike atmosphere of the whole book.

Tender and harsh at the same time, this book sticks with ya.

The publishers litter the blurb with the words 'immoral' and 'appalling'... I'm still not sure why. If I detailed the events that Morvern relays to us to you, you might think me a bit warped by saying that. Maybe I am. But the narrative always favours event over emotion, and by doing that it defines living a black and white existence and suddenly being presented with the opportunity to get colour widescreen with surround sound. The book is truly 'the child of the raves'; the concept of living for the weekend taken to a logical extreme that had never occurred to you. The book is far from judgemental, with no patronising of those that don't live in the media belt but who still like swimming in an Ibizan sea. It is a deliberate irony that Morvern's plain observation is lyrical, against the presumed pretentiousness we just know her boyfriend's novel is probably filled with.

Morvern never names him as far as I remember, only referring to him as Him. It's probably reading too much into it to think this suggests God is dead, having committed suicide after growing bored with reality...