‘He’d cut His throat with the knife. He’d nearly chopped off
His hand with the meat cleaver. He couldn’t object, so I lit a Silk Cut.’
The opening to Morvern
Callar (US)
is very strong. Every action and thought is noted. Each character has a special
name. The buzz and the vividness almost creates the illusion that she’s
speaking in a different language, like she’s just read A Clockwork Orange and
is taking bites from it. Her boyfriend, He/Him/His, has killed himself in their
flat and Callar reacts by doing nothing about it. She opens her Christmas
presents, smokes a lot of Silk Cut and goes off to work in her local
supermarket. There’s a hint that what follows will be something profound. A
tale of disconnection and alienation in the age of the rave. Given the powerful
reviews, I suspect that the profundity is there, it’s just that I didn’t really
grasp it. Perhaps it was a little too cold and raw in places for my taste.
There are wild encounters and travels as Callar takes a
journey that seems to be part nihilism and part self-destruct. She’s on the
road. She lives a life-and-a-half. Her interactions with the people she meets
and her surroundings are interesting and her life is packed full of
experiences. What a cracking woman she is.
I found sections really engrossing and beautifully written
and I think that the book has many parts that make the book worthwhile taking
on. For me, however, I felt that the whole was less than those parts. Then
again, I might just be an old man who’s arrived to the part about twenty years too
late.
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