I did enjoy this, though at times it was (to steal a word) bonkers! I read it in one sitting, never knowing what would happen next. ( )

In rereading this book, one of the things that really strike me is it's distinct 90ies style, something that I didn't reflect over at all the first time I read it about five years ago. Warner's slightly detatched attention to detail seems very much a product of it's time. It's a prose where it's equally important to describe what brand of cigarette a person smokes and what colour the ligher is (every time) as to tell tall tales on a bar or go into detail on how it feels to slip in the blood of your boyfriend after finding his dead body.

For this book, told in first person by Morvern Callar herself (a rare choice for a male writer indeed!) this style works really well. Never is she letting us know how she feels or what she thinks, keeping the writing almost behavouristic. But in the descriptions of events and actions her emoptions are seeping through, and the little things like when she suddenly sobs once becomes strangely moving.

Beginning in a small Scottish harbour town (could be Oban or Ullapool and surely any number of places that I haven't visited) this book gives a very dignfied picture of life in a small working class community. It's not cute by a long shot, but this unpretty picture is also full of warmth and a kind of respect. You get the feeling the writer really knows this place, these people, well enough to not have to give us the full story. Morvern Callar is a story of coming of age, saying goodbye, but eventually also about coming home. The book starts with Morvern coming home from work to find her boyfriend having committed suicide, and her decision not to report his death but rather to hide his body (a choice that becomes strangely understandable, even without an explanation). She discovers he's left her some money and goes on a holiday only to have her horizones widened and her life eventually changed. The novel loses some momentum towards the end, but it's well worth reading. And Morvern in her silent intelligence and sensualism, is a very memorable character. ( )

First things first: Morvern Callar is not a 'nice' book, or at least, it is not populated by nice people. It's the sort of book such that if someone asks you if you're enjoying it, you'll probably say "no, but it's a good book". If you like to like your protagonists, or need your bad guys evil and your good guys angelic, put the book down and back slowly away.

Morvern is a woman who does some appalling things and she describes these things in the same breath as she talks about how she shaves her legs or which mix tape she likes. Although, while she does some deeply revolting things, is she a revolting person? Nearly all the characters commit similarly casual brutalities: watch out for the man with bandaged arms, the girl in the parade, the locals' pub stories and, most obviously, the opening suicide. Compare and contrast. Selfishness and violence manifest in many different ways in different people and Warner takes a refreshingly objective view of each.

The other important aspect of this story is its telling in colloquial Scots. Warner's version is more subtle than, say, Irvine Welsh's in Trainspotting, but it has tremendous effect; as in making the story highly personal to Morvern and her voice (the novel is entirely first person narration), her own lack of self-justification is even more pronounced.

Also, I don't really know enough about it to say how this stands up as a comment on 90s raver culture, but I expect it would be an interesting extra layer, for those who could appreciate it. ( )

I didn't enjoy this book at all. I disliked the anti-heroine intensely. We never find out what she's feeling, only what she's doing or seeing, or what the colour of the ciggie lighter is; this last obsession was profoundly irritating. Being a child of the 60s & 70s, I felt really grumpy-old-womanish about the rave generation portrayed here. ( )