Morvern Callar

Title: Morvern Callar

Author: Alan Warner
Publisher: Vintage

Year: 1995 (I read the second edition, published 1996)

During the last semester, one of my lecturers asked the class whether we had read Alan Warner’s novel Morvern Callar (1995). After our heads made a negative gesture, he said something like: “What are you doing studying in Scotland and not having read it? Get out of my class and read it now!”. He also explained most of the plot, but still I wanted to read it, he had made it sound worth it.

It definitely is. It’s gripping, macabre, funny, poetic, sexual, unpretentious, moving and, first and foremost, wildly alive. Most of these definitions also apply to the novel’s protagonist, Morvern. Her unprejudiced, wild, truthful, shameless, casual and often lyrical take on the world around her is one of the most attractive aspects of Warner’s book.

Language and slang are also in the list of the book’s appealing qualities. Warner builds personal voices that you would recognise should you encounter them again (and you can, as Morvern appears in other Warner novels). Music is a constant presence throughout the book. Someone has even gone as far as to try to build up a Spotify playlist out of all the songs mentioned! I've also found out that there was a film made out of the novel in 2002.

Publishers and literary agents are said to believe that a good opening sentence/paragraph is what makes a lot of readers decide whether or not to buy a book (along with other factors such as the author’s fame, the critical reception, the cover, the blurb, etc). Well, Warner’s first paragraph decidedly makes you want to read on, if only because of the gorey scene described:

“He’d cut His throat with the knife. He’d near chopped off His hands with the meat cleaver. He couldnt object so I lit a Silk Cut. A sort of wave of something was going across me. There was fright but I’d daydreamed how I’d be.” (1)

Morvern’s life takes a drastic turn after her unnamed boyfriend’s suicide on the first page, and the novel goes on to show us more about it. One of the first things one notices is the appalling village life. The only palliatives at hand are alcohol/drugs, sex and laughter. Morvern herself puts her possibilities very eloquently as “working in a supermarket; waking up on cold mornings knowing it’s thirty-nine years to go till pension.” (161)

Her fosterdad, Red Hanna, is also a working-class philosopher: “The hidden fact of our world is that theres no point in having desire unless youve money. […] Yet what good is all the money in the world to me now when all I want to do is stare out the bungalow window at the mountains? Money would destroy what I’ve learned to accept over the years. In plain language, I’m fifty-five: a wasted life.” (45)

But His death gives Morvern a chance at something different from the limiting village life: “The massive pale lips of a girl seemed to turn up to the night sky ready for kissing and you could see the light from the screen flicker on the leaves. I turned facing the sea. You heard a drip come offof my hair. I closed my eyes there in the quietness just breathing in and breathing in. I hadnt slept for three days so I could know every minute of that happiness that I never even dared dream I had the right.” (210) 

Have you read Morvern Callar or seen the film? If the answer's a "no", go ahead and do it! :)