Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

Morvern Callar: I watched the film adaptation of Morvern Callar earlier this year, and really liked it, it was dream-like, very quiet and drifting. I’d often thought about picking up the book but hadn’t had the chance to read it until now. Around Christmas time, 21-year-old supermarket stock girl Morvern Callar finds her older boyfriend has committed suicide in their flat. He leaves her some cash and the unpublished manuscript of his novel. Rather than notifying the authorities Morvern simply sticks to her usual routine, and if He (the unnamed boyfriend) comes up in conversation, she merely tells family and friends that He has left her, packed up and gone.

“I love you Morvern; feel my love in the evenings in the corners of all the rooms you will be in. Keep your conscience immaculate and live the life people like me have denied you. You are better than us.”
(from His suicide note)

Morvern Callar is a hauntingly dark tale, but only when you stop and reflect. Told entirely from Morvern’s point of view, she remains disconnected from her actions – instead reveling in the banal details of her life – we may not know how she feels about her boyfriend’s sudden suicide, but we do know the colour of her cigarette lighter and what music she is listening to. Morvern doesn’t seem capable of realizing the gravity of what she is doing. Told heavily in her colloquial Scottish, Morvern remains emotionally unavailable to the reader, and to those around her.

“After a long time I says, Stay here a bit. In Nature. Away from Creeping Jesus and the work. This place, it doesnt care, it’s just here. It helps that this place is here just a few hours’ walk away. All this loveliness. It’s just silence isn’t it?”

The reliance on drugs, booze and sex as a narrative force doesn’t seem depraved and seedy as all of this is experienced through Morvern’s strangely detached manner. This possibly makes it all much sordid than it appears, though makes the point that regular drug and alcohol use is just as much a part of Morvern’s daily reality as listening to records or stacking potatoes at the supermarket. There is a shift in tone when Morvern and her best friend, Lanna, go on a holiday funded by the advance paid by London publishers for ‘her’ novel. Here it seems to revel in the weirdness of that youth gone wild on foreign shores holiday atmosphere. Some of the rave scenes toward the end of the book are described beautifully, keenly aware of the rhythm and chemical sensation that take over the body. Just another method for Morvern to distance herself from the magnitude of her situation and her actions.

I’m uncomfortable with saying that I enjoyed this novel, but it did have an impact on me. The story is dark, the characters are for the most part despicable and impenetrable, but there is an unsettling energy at the heart of Morvern Callar. Alan Warner’s The Sopranos has been recommended to me, so I think on the strength of Morvern Callar I might check that one out soon as well.