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The Lightning Rod
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M O R V E R N c A L L A R BY ALAN WARNER | ANCHOR BOOKS, 242 PAGES
BY CHARLES TAYLOR of all the new Scottish novelists, Alan Warner seems closest to the anomic nihilism of Irvine Welsh. His first novel, "Morvern Callar," opens with a deadpan shocker -- the eponymous heroine finding her boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor after he slits his own throat -- proceeds through Morvern's dead-end job; her anesthetizing binges on booze, dope, music and sex; and moves on to her prowls through the rave clubs of the Mediterranean. Morvern's reaction to the suicide is vintage blank generation amoral: She disposes of the body, plunders her dead boyfriend's bank account and submits his novel to a London publisher after putting her name on it. But what makes "Morvern Callar" the best of the new Scottish writing is the inescapable sorrow of Morvern's voice. Warner has written a novel that teeters between coolly shocking hipness and a fuller, more mature sensibility. He nails the hopelessness of working-class life in the port town where Morvern lives without overdoing it or shortchanging the characters. The most touching parts of the book depict her dealings with older people: her girlfriend's gran or her own foster father. If there seems to be no generation gap here, it's because the young recognize their own fate in the wrung-out lives of their elders. The temporary escapes open to them (there's an indelible, hellish sequence detailing Morvern's package holiday to a sub-Club Med resort) only reinforce the awfulness that awaits.
The problem is that Morvern's too full of feeling for the callousness with which she treats her boyfriend's death to be believable. It's easy to see how his death (and his money) gives Morvern a chance to escape (it's a clue that one of her favorite videos is Antonioni's "The Passenger," about a man who tries to make a new start by swapping identities with a dead man). And Warner renders Morvern's no-way-out life so vividly, it's not as if we'd lose sympathy for her if she felt driven by desperation to exploit her loss. But Warner doesn't allow her any uneasiness, and that feels like a concession both to hipness and to all the clichéd editorializing about what the jacket copy calls "the vast internal emptiness" of today's youth. He's created a heroine who's anything but empty, who spends much of her time trying to deaden the feelings crowding her insides. Morvern is engaging, determined to express what she can't quite articulate, and Warner is a compelling storyteller. He's got a chance at being the next big thing. Here's hoping he becomes the next genuine thing.
Charles Taylor lives in Boston. He is a regular contributor to Salon. |
