Alan Warner's Morvern Callar may be the first novel that deserves its own soundtrack. The music Warner's title character listens to as she drifts aimlessly through her sterile life may be the most worthwhile part of this depressing novel. Following in the footsteps of Trainspotting, another Scottish tale of anomie in the Highlands, Morvern Callar chronicles Morvern's dead-end existence--a joyless round of sex and raves punctuated by the music playing through her portable stereo. Warner tells this dreary story from Morvern's point of view in a voice that is flat and affectless, as if the girl's soul had died years before though her body continues to function. Morvern Callar is a strange mix of shocking and banal, a mélange with appeal for a very specialized audience.


The New York Times Book Review, Jennifer Kornreich
While Morvern's opacity is obviously meant to convey hip disaffection, the novel's matter-of-fact amorality quickly grows tiresome. Mr. Warner's true forte is his deadpan rendering of the idiosyncratic trappings of Morvern's morbid world. Unfortunately, these appalling but convincing details never add up to anything in particular; ultimately, understanding their significance is as impossible for us as it is for Morvern herself.


From Booklist
Warner, one of the new "Scottish beat" writers like Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), forcefully evokes the dreary life in a northern Scotland port town of Morvern Callar, whose name means "quieter silence" in Scottish. The book opens with Morvern's discovery of her boyfriend's body: a suicide on Christmas Eve. She opens her gifts, goes to her despised supermarket job, and pub hops that night. Unexpected reactions are Morvern's trademark and make her story fascinating. Directionless and disgusted at home, she uses money unexpectedly inherited from her boyfriend to return to the Mediterranean rave scene she had discovered on a trip to "Youth Med." In the end, she returns broke and still sullen. This may be the first novel with a soundtrack: Morvern acknowledges the songs she listens to on her Walkman while moving through the actions of the narrative. The sound of her strong voice telling this wild adventure may play through readers' heads long after they have put down this book. Kevin Grandfield


From Kirkus Reviews
How does a do-it-all party girl become a woman of virtue, the next best thing to the Virgin Mary? The answer, savage yet serene, is this seductive debut from Warner, one of a just-arriving group of new Scottish writers. The shock of waking one morning before Christmas to find her man dead on the floor proves less stressful for Morvern Callar, a produce-stacker who lives only for music and the next rave, than the inconvenience of having to deal with his body. She goes to work in her seaside Scottish town, then goes to a club, then an all- night party. But when she finally comes home a few days later, he's still there. So she hauls him into the attic and opens the windows for the winter, availing herself of his CDs and bank account and sending his unpublished novel around as he requested, but passing it off as her own. When warm weather arrives, Morvern has to deal with him again; this time she chops him up and goes on a camping trip to dispose of the pieces. Then, craving a change, she abandons work for a Mediterranean resort, where she spends everything, even a publisher's advance for ``her'' novel. Broke and jobless, she comes home to find her foster dad making out with her best friend- -who has already confessed to having gone wild with Morvern's boyfriend the night before he cut his throat. But Morvern also finds a letter informing her that the boyfriend's ample inheritance has been left to her, so she immediately heads back to the blue skies, warm beaches, and the resort rave scene--where in her splendid isolation she has an epiphany. On her next return home a few years later, much is changed, but then so is she. Morvern is the raw, resilient voice of a generation, and if this not-quite-ironic tale of redemption and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting are any indication, the Scottish Beats are already strong contenders for world-class literary status. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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


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

ANNOTATION

In his shocking debut novel, Scottish author Alan Warner probes the vast internal emptiness of the tripped-out, rave generation. Through the cool, haunting voice of his female narrator, Morvern Callar, he plunges readers into the brutal, intoxicating, hollow depths of one woman's opaque soul. 224 pp. Author tour. Print ads. Online ads & promo. 17,500 print.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Morvern Callar, a low-paid employee in the local supermarket of a desolate and beautiful port town in the west of Scotland, wakes one morning in late December to find that her boyfriend has committed suicide and is lying dead on the kitchen floor. Morvern's reaction is both intriguing and immoral, and what she does next is appalling. Moving across a blurred European landscape - from the rural poverty and drunken mayhem of the Scottish port to the Mediterranean rave scene - we experience everything from Morvern's stark, unflinching perspective. She rarely goes anywhere without the Walkman left behind as a Christmas present by her dead boyfriend, and as she narrates this strange story, she takes care to tell the reader exactly what music she is listening to, creating the stunning effect of a soundtrack running behind her voice throughout the novel. Alan Warner probes the vast internal emptiness of a generation by using the cool, haunting voice of a female narrator lost in the profound anomie of the rave scene. Hers is a chilling, hardcore perspective, entirely different from the cliched whiny angst of Generation X.

SYNOPSIS

Morvern Callar, a low-paid employee in the local supermarket in a desolate and beautiful port town in the west of Scotland, wakes one morning in late December to find her strange boyfriend has committed suicide and is dead on the kitchen floor. Morvern's reaction is both intriguing and immoral. What she does next is even more appalling. Moving across a blurred European landscape — from rural poverty and drunken mayhem of the port to the Mediterranean rave scene — we experience everything from Morvern's stark, unflinching perspective.

Morvern is utterly hypnotizing from her very first sentence to her last. She rarely goes anywhere without the Walkman left behind as a Christmas present by her dead boyfriend, and as she narrates this strange story, she takes care to tell the reader exactly what music she is listening to, giving the stunning effect of a sound track running behind her voice.

In much the same way that Patrick McCabe managed to tell an incredibly rich and haunting story through the eyes of an emotionally disturbed boy in The Butcher Boy, Alan Warner probes the vast internal emptiness of a generation by using the cool, haunting voice of a female narrator lost in the profound anomie of the ecstasy generation. Morvern is a brilliant creation, not so much memorable as utterly unforgettable."

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Morvern Callar is a woman who goes to extremes. But then, her life is so appalling that only extreme behavior can help her survive. From the opening scene of her boyfriend's grisly suicide in their tiny depressed Scottish town to her immersion in the wild sensuousness of the European rave scene, Morvern pulls the reader with her as she takes charge of her booze- and drug-driven life. After hiding "His" body (her dead boyfriend remains nameless and capitalized throughout), Morvern takes His money and His novel and escapes. A disastrous Youth Med vacation is followed by a comical night out with her London publishers, a modicum of peace in an unnamed southern land and a nocturnal life of raves and night swimming before she finally comes full circle back to Scotland. It's easy to see why this first novel won its author a Somerset Maugham Award, a nomination for the Whitbread First Novel Award and notice as one of Scotland's new beat writers. Though not written in Scots dialect, the prose captures the cadence and pulse essential to the Scottish voice. Unlike her American 20-something counterparts, Morvern does not whine and endlessly complain, but rather acts, constantly responding to the bizarre turns that life throws her with determined purpose and her own brand of morality. Morvern is a right wild sexy Scottish rave chick tied into the pulse of everything from Zawinul to John McCormack, and Warner endows her with a powerful first-person narrative voice that conveys the sights, sounds (Morvern always tells the reader what's playing on her Walkman or stereo, providing a sort of soundtrack for the novel), tastes and scents of her experience. Film rights to BBC; author tour. (Mar.)

Charles Taylor

[O]f all the new Scottish novelists, Alan Warner seems closest to the anomic nihilism of Irvine Welsh. His first novel, Morvern Callar, opens with a deadpan shocker -- the eponymous heroine finding her boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor after he slits his own throat -- proceeds through Morvern's dead-end job; her anesthetizing binges on booze, dope, music and sex; and moves on to her prowls through the rave clubs of the Mediterranean. Morvern's reaction to the suicide is vintage blank generation amoral: She disposes of the body, plunders her dead boyfriend's bank account and submits his novel to a London publisher after putting her name on it.

But what makes Morvern Callar the best of the new Scottish writing is the inescapable sorrow of Morvern's voice. Warner has written a novel that teeters between coolly shocking hipness and a fuller, more mature sensibility. He nails the hopelessness of working-class life in the port town where Morvern lives without overdoing it or shortchanging the characters. The most touching parts of the book depict her dealings with older people: her girlfriend's gran or her own foster father. If there seems to be no generation gap here, it's because the young recognize their own fate in the wrung-out lives of their elders. The temporary escapes open to them (there's an indelible, hellish sequence detailing Morvern's package holiday to a sub-Club Med resort) only reinforce the awfulness that awaits.

The problem is that Morvern's too full of feeling for the callousness with which she treats her boyfriend's death to be believable. It's easy to see how his death (and his money) gives Morvern a chance to escape (it's a clue that one of her favorite videos is Antonioni's "The Passenger," about a man who tries to make a new start by swapping identities with a dead man). And Warner renders Morvern's no-way-out life so vividly, it's not as if we'd lose sympathy for her if she felt driven by desperation to exploit her loss. But Warner doesn't allow her any uneasiness, and that feels like a concession both to hipness and to all the clichTd editorializing about what the jacket copy calls "the vast internal emptiness" of today's youth. He's created a heroine who's anything but empty, who spends much of her time trying to deaden the feelings crowding her insides. Morvern is engaging, determined to express what she can't quite articulate, and Warner is a compelling storyteller. He's got a chance at being the next big thing. Here's hoping he becomes the next genuine thing. --Salon

Kirkus Reviews

How does a do-it-all party girl become a woman of virtue, the next best thing to the Virgin Mary? The answer, savage yet serene, is this seductive debut from Warner, one of a just-arriving group of new Scottish writers.

The shock of waking one morning before Christmas to find her man dead on the floor proves less stressful for Morvern Callar, a produce-stacker who lives only for music and the next rave, than the inconvenience of having to deal with his body. She goes to work in her seaside Scottish town, then goes to a club, then an all- night party. But when she finally comes home a few days later, he's still there. So she hauls him into the attic and opens the windows for the winter, availing herself of his CDs and bank account and sending his unpublished novel around as he requested, but passing it off as her own. When warm weather arrives, Morvern has to deal with him again; this time she chops him up and goes on a camping trip to dispose of the pieces. Then, craving a change, she abandons work for a Mediterranean resort, where she spends everything, even a publisher's advance for "her" novel. Broke and jobless, she comes home to find her foster dad making out with her best friend—who has already confessed to having gone wild with Morvern's boyfriend the night before he cut his throat. But Morvern also finds a letter informing her that the boyfriend's ample inheritance has been left to her, so she immediately heads back to the blue skies, warm beaches, and the resort rave scene—where in her splendid isolation she has an epiphany. On her next return home a few years later, much is changed, but then so is she.

Morvern is the raw, resilient voice of a generation, and if this not-quite-ironic tale of redemption and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting are any indication, the Scottish Beats are already strong contenders for world-class literary status.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Morvern Callar is a wonder and a danger, not for the faint-hearted; the reader is cut open by a...saw finely sharpened on a stone of nihilism. — Mark Richard

Morvern is a brilliant creation, a fearlessly cool and sassy party chic propelled by her own delicious morality...establishes Allan Warner as one of the most talented, original, and interesting voices around. — Irvine Welsh