Morvern Callar -- Alan Warner, Paperback

An utterly unforgettable novel that portrays a vast internal emptiness by using the cool, haunting voice of a young woman in Scotland lost in the profound anomie of her generation--from "one of the most talented, original and interesting voices around" (Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting).

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's Morvern Caller is a brilliant creation.

Author: Alan Warner
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 02/17/1997
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.41lbs
Size: 8.07h x 5.23w x 0.57d
ISBN: 9780385487412
Award: International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award - Nominee

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/27/1997 pg. 76
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/1997 pg. 18
Booklist 02/15/1997 pg. 1005
Library Journal 02/01/1997 pg. 109
New York Times 05/18/1997 pg. 21

About the Author
ALAN WARNER is the author of three novels: Morvern Callar, which was made into a film by Lynn Ramsay; These Demented Lands, which won the 1998 Encore Award; and The Sopranos, also made into a film.