Reviews

Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

w0rms_for_brainz's review against another edition

dark funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

solstraalen's review against another edition

Soundtrack is wild

casparb's review against another edition

morvern is an excellent time though I'd have to describe the experience of reading it as something like a 3am tennents waterboarding. I mean that nicely. In truth the novel does run with constant submersions, bathing, dunking, pouring out & pouring in. It's one of my favourite elements everything is liquids slopping about and I think Alan did very well there

on the alan note I feel his 2015 afterword is very revealing, in positive directions. It unpacked her character in a way that respected her agency - I have one or two reservations with him still but I'll leave them at the door. I like that she's the chaos agent and bundles her way through the novel like a meteor saying fuck any sense of structure or foreshadowing since she's doing it her way. She's also one of the most desperately sad characters I've encountered in a good while & that's so emphatically felt yet one knows she can't be scooped up and helped along.

freyaeiou's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction and Death

tinybigthings's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

roisin_prendergast's review against another edition

4.0

I am entranced by Morvern Callar and I feel nauseated - which is always a good sign for me.

erincataldi's review against another edition

3.0

I don't know how I feel about this or what it was I just read.... This was a difficult read because I'm not Scottish. I don't know Scottish slang or shorthand and had to google phrases every other page (hint: greeting means crying... don't ask me why). The book is written as free flowing thought from the mind of a young twenty something Scottish gal. The book opens up with her finding the body of her boyfriend in her kitchen after he commits suicide. From there the book takes off into a weird spiral. After crying initially she leaves the body for a few days and chain-smokes and drinks her way through town with her best friend. She is the emotionally oddest character I have ever read. Beyond that there is: sex, raves, drugs, drunks, introductions to people with weird names, body disposal, and the horror of working at a shitty supermarket.

If you can handle reading Irvine Walsh (Trainspotting) and Scottish prose then I am sure you will love the book and understand what in the hell is going on. I finished it. It wasn't awful, but I'm still confused. Perhaps the movie adaptation will shed some light on what in the hell is going on. Not for light readers or those easily confused.

vorpalblad's review against another edition

3.0

While difficult to connect with this disconnected title character it is a novel that sticks with me.

sandin954's review against another edition

3.0

Morvern was definitely a unique character and parts of this book were fascinating but I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had read the book back in 1995 and I could have more related to the " vast internal emptiness of a generation" that the author was supposedly probing according to the book jacket.

katdid's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 stars? If I'd read it back in the day I probably would have loved it though.

I’ve been meaning to read this book for a good twenty years after hearing about it when I was first at uni. And then recently I found it at my local op shop for three bucks! (Seriously my local op shop is a gold mine of awesome books.) Reading it reminded me of reading [b:Trainspotting|703645|Trainspotting|Irvine Welsh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1379533280l/703645._SY75_.jpg|1087421] (again, a good twenty years ago), since they’re both set in Scotland among a rough crowd and use the same vernacular (although this is more lite-on than Trainspotting). It really made me think about morality, more than any book I’ve read in a while.

Spoiler

Like, Kat-now doesn’t think it’s immoral for Morvern to first ignore her boyfriend’s body and then later dispose of it; but I do think it’s immoral to replace his name on his manuscript with her own after he’d explicitly asked in his death note that she shop it around to publishers.

I don’t know how I feel about Morvern overall, because she was clearly surrounded by ratbags and how on earth could you ever hope to be better than that? She was an interesting mix of aim-to-please and nae-bother-me, probably with a bit of either mental illness or delayed development thrown in since she didn’t seem too concerned with consequences. The ending was unsatisfying, but I don’t know how it could have ended otherwise.