Morvern Callar

Morvern Callar is a woman who goes to extremes. But then, her life is so appalling that only extreme behavior can help her survive. From the opening scene of her boyfriend's grisly suicide in their tiny depressed Scottish town to her immersion in the wild sensuousness of the European rave scene, Morvern pulls the reader with her as she takes charge of her booze- and drug-driven life. After hiding ""His"" body (her dead boyfriend remains nameless and capitalized throughout), Morvern takes His money and His novel and escapes. A disastrous Youth Med vacation is followed by a comical night out with her London publishers, a modicum of peace in an unnamed southern land and a nocturnal life of raves and night swimming before she finally comes full circle back to Scotland. It's easy to see why this first novel won its author a Somerset Maugham Award, a nomination for the Whitbread First Novel Award and notice as one of Scotland's new beat writers. Though not written in Scots dialect, the prose captures the cadence and pulse essential to the Scottish voice. Unlike her American 20-something counterparts, Morvern does not whine and endlessly complain, but rather acts, constantly responding to the bizarre turns that life throws her with determined purpose and her own brand of morality. Morvern is a right wild sexy Scottish rave chick tied into the pulse of everything from Zawinul to John McCormack, and Warner endows her with a powerful first-person narrative voice that conveys the sights, sounds (Morvern always tells the reader what's playing on her Walkman or stereo, providing a sort of soundtrack for the novel), tastes and scents of her experience. Film rights to BBC; author tour. (Mar.)