Morvern Caller

by Liana Dognini (Photographer), Lynne Ramsay

Morvern Callar is a 21-year-old supermarket worker from a small port town in the West of Scotland. Morvern believes that life is something that you get on with, as best you can and with what you've got. One morning Morvern finds that what she's got is a dead boyfriend on the kitchen floor. Extraordinarily, she doesn't tell anyone and this and her subsequent choices propel her on a journey that transforms her life.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2003

Reviews

[Gilden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Possibly the most weird book I have ever read. I found it very difficult to follow due to the unusual writing style.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great choice to whip through while spending a few days on a remote Scottish island in January, and I really enjoyed reading it - and quickly too. I'd seen the film when it came out in the early noughties, and it's a very sensual, spooky number with Samantha Morton doing a great job as Movern. The book is a little tricky to get into, with the very colloquial scottish dialect/writing, but not as tough as something like James Kelman. More poetic license here, and lyrical etc.

The premise of her finding her boyfriend's body in her flat after he commits suicide is a great one, and it's got such a strong start. At times the detail and repetition as the narrator describes in excruiciating detail her ever move, got right on my wick, but if you let it wash over you and envelope yourself in her strange world it really works. She does deeply strange things and the book feels very much like peering over her shoulder as she goes about the world in this odd, odd state of weird.

Incredibly atmospheric. Not for everyone, but I'd like to read some more Alan Warner - and will be going back to the film again too.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was recommended in the Wall Street Journal. It even gave the basic plot:

"When Morvern Callar discovers that her boyfriend has cut his own throat, she hardly reacts at all:"There was fright but I'd daydreamed how I'd be.' ...We follow Morvern as she hides her boyfriend's corpse in the attic, empties his bank account and submits the novel he has been writing to a publisher- under her own name."

That seems like quite a clever, intriguing plot.

Trouble is, Alan Warner writes in such a way that it totally never makes sense. Had I not been give the synopsis in the WSJ I would have thought a small child had randomly selected words and asked that they be compiled into a book.

[RachelvlehcaR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: If you don't understand Scottish Slang this will be a very tough read.

One of my friends, Scottish, recommend this book. I had to ask him a lot of what some of the Scottish Slang meant since this book is loading with it.

He said it was pretty much how he and his friends and the average teenage, young adult, Scot lives, especially during the 1990s and early 2000s.

It was interesting to read about and the movie is interesting too.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book and the movie is amazing. Its hard. Not boring but definitily hard. I strongly recommend it.

[Michelle Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts out with the MC stepping over the body (and the subsequent pool of blood) of her dead boyfriend to get ready for work. It doesn't really get better from there.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best thing in the world. Morvern's boyfriend kills himself and leaves her money, and it is interesting to see how she handles the situation and uses the money.