Product Description

It is off-season in a remote Highland sea port: 21-year-old Morvern Callar, a low-paid employee in the local supermarket, wakes one morning to find her strange boyfriend has committed suicide and is dead on their kitchen floor. Morvern's laconic reaction is both intriguing and immoral. What she does next is even more appalling...Brutal, erotic, jarringly poetic and rich in a blood-dark humour, Morvern Callar is a powerful debut novel from a new Scottish writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109586 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
"Morvern gleams like an onyx from a vivid, macabre and lyrical book...she is impossible to forget." -- Elizabeth Young, "Guardian

Nick Hornby, Books of the Year, Observer
‘Morvern Callar must be the year’s most unjustly neglected novel…bleak, haunting and brilliantly original’

Scotland on Sunday
‘Not since Camus’ Outsider has a voice with so many angles hopped and fluttered from the page, has a note risen to chill in its opening breath’

Customer Reviews

Subliminal Anti-hero
I first read this book the year of publication. From the start, it pertains to what Morvern does, not what her emotions are telling her. The opening scene is dramatic, but simply opens up a chapter of the character's life that would not otherwise be possible (having the money from the book). This book is not about the evocation of feeling, or lacks majesty through its repeatedly descriptive lines in the book; the descriptive of the world around Morvern is unerringly accurate. Anyone who has grown up in a small town like this, can sense the dead-end prospects she coldly, coolly leaves behind, only to come back to eventually. To really understand more about this character and appreciate the depth of Warner's writing, try These Demented Lands (also starring Morvern Callar) and his fantastic novel, The Man Who Walks. Definitely not a book for the tube, try it on a train journey, or at home. Many people have missed the point of what Warner is trying to evoke, its not about trying to establish elements of the character you can relate to, its simply someone you can look at from afar and marvel at the events unfolding in their life and the decisions they make.

Glimpses of both the brilliant and the banal, but average overall
I have mixed feelings about this book, in which there is very little consistency. I thought some parts of it were brilliant, but others were amongst the most banal and tedious writing I have ever read.

The story is good, original, well thought out and truly shocking in parts. I think Warner very graphically, and perhaps accurately, paints a picture of life in a small West Highlands port. One of the main strengths of the novel is the way in which he builds his fictional characters, through descriptions of both them and their actions, into ones that are truly believable within the location in which the novel is set. Many of the characters, including the central figure, Morvern Callar, are a heady mix of boredom, unfulfilled ambitions and alcohol and drug abuse, which possibly helps create an air of authenticity given the setting.

What I found more difficult to accept was the constant repetition of certain things, which really did become tedious and irksome at times and reduced rather than enhanced the worth of the novel. I lost count of the number of times she "...used the goldish lighter on a Silk Cut...". Who cares what the colour of the lighter was, or about the brand of cigarette? The constant references to the colour and application mode of Morvern's various beauty products such as nail varnish and lipstick were also tedious and superfluous, as were the detailed, but completely pointless, track lists of what she listened to on her Walkman.

So the best parts were 5 star, but the other bits, regrettably all too numerous, were worse than 1 star. Overall 2.5 star rounded up to 3 star.

Subtle, original - a really enjoyable read.
I read this book straight after I'd seen the film, which had absolutely mesmerised me. Samantha Morton is an absolutely brilliant actress, whilst Lynne Ramsay is such an assured and inspired director. There are lots of differences between the book and the film, but that is no bad thing as a lot of the book would not translate well to the screen.
From the start, Warner presents us with a very unusual style - it is seen through Morvern's eyes, and like most people, she has phrases which she reverts to time and time again in order to describe things - the one that springs to mind is "I used the goldish lighter on a Silk Cut." (I don't think I will ever get that sentence out of my head, it was repeated so many times!). Repeated too was the desciptions of various beautifying regimes that Morvern performs, eg. her nail varnish. I got a little suspicious of Warner's repeated references to certain colours of nail varnish or lipstick, as I wasn't sure that it wasn't aan easy way of trying to penetrate the feminine sphere. Another reference that was arguably heavy-handed was references to Morvern's periods. However, I wouldn't condemn Warnerout of hand for these tricks - they simply build up an idea of Morvern as an insular, self-possessed solitary figure.
I read this book in the course of 2 days and couldn't wait to get back to it when I put it down. I think it's a real achievement that the central issue of the novel, that of the boyfriend's corpse, is basically buried (rather fittingly) - and it remains a secret between the reader and Morvern. She is certainly one of the most exciting, individual and complex protaganists I have met for a long time. Well done, Alan Warner -
I must read your other works!