Named after the author’s mother’s last words, this is the long-awaited fifth novel by one of Britain’s best and most underrated writers. Warner comes from Scotland and thus was associated with the explosion of Scots working-class writing spearheaded by James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. It is true that the novels contain much of the lowlife backdrops and dark wit of these latter writers; Warner’s debut, Morvern Callar, centred on a young checkout girl living in a port town near Oban who escapes a struggling life by selling her dead boyfriend’s novel manuscript. But it was clear even then that Warner was a talent like no one else.
The second book, These Demented Lands, saw Morvern Callar arrive on a remote Northern island dominated by the sinister John Brotherhood, proprietor of the Drome Hotel. While Morvern Callar itself maintained a patina of realism, its sequel let Warner’s imagination off its leash. Brotherhood is a demonic figure who sets his guests bizarre tasks to pay their rent, and we are never sure if the island is real or if Morvern has in fact ended up in some netherworld. The book features a government official investigating an aircraft accident; when he steps on the wrong toes he has the propeller lashed to his back and is made to walk the length of the island, a mid-nineties Ancient Mariner. This vision is both surreal and utterly convincing.
Warner’s third novel, The Sopranos, followed the adventures of a group of Catholic schoolgirls on a trip to Edinburgh, and The Man Who Walks, ‘a road movie on foot’, is the story of the Macushla, a violent and unstable ex-traveller on the tail of his estranged uncle. These novels are set in the highlands and cities of the North, but what links them is a gift for bizarre symbolism, the pinpoint accuracy of his imaginings, and moments of great beauty and truth.
This new book is a departure, in that it takes place entirely in the Spanish coastal towns like those which Morvern Callar fled to. Manolo Follana is a successful designer and womaniser who’s about to get a big shock: he has a terminal disease spoken of only as The Condition. This revelation from his playful doctor triggers a desire in Follana to confess his life, and he gets the opportunity with the arrival of Ahmed, an asylum seeker who washes up on his beachfront home. In an argument with Follana, Ahmed provides a nice aside on the immigration debate: ‘There is one thing you don’t understand.’ ‘What?’ ‘Our navigation is not good. We were aiming for Monaco and the casinos.’
Alan Warner has always loved to play with ancient myth and narrative (Irvine Welsh says of him that he is better read than all of his critics) and we see that although Follana wants to make his confession, the only priest he deserves is a starving immigrant. Undeterred, Follana gives Ahmed – and us – the story of his childhood growing up in his parents’ hotel, the death of his parents, his two ruined marriages. Although readers will recognise Warner’s trademark of bizarre physical situations giving an insight into deeper dissolution (Follana was born with a caul on his face; while swimming with two girls in the hotel septic tank it accidentally falls in, becoming processed into the hotel’s drinking water) it is clear that now Warner is concentrating on the deep fundamentals: love, humanity, death. And he does it magnificently.
There are wonderful set pieces – dozens of stray cats live in a wrecked houseboat by the shore, and every day Follana goes down to feed them. There are Warner’s reflections on written and spoken language, as when Follana passes a restaurant where tourists point to pictures on the menu rather than speak the name of the food (‘A gesture and a grunt and we are fed. The Stone Age returns to Europe’). There is his great talent for nicknames (see the riotous paragraph in Morvern Callar where she lists the esoteric monikers of all the regulars in her local pub). There are lines in this book that make you gasp, lines that you are drawn to read over and over again. There are sentences that compel you to read them aloud; alone, on the train, in pubs.
As with all of Warner’s books, the words seemed to speak for and through me. He is one of the best writers of his generation, but hopefully he will cease to be underrated. I am confident that more will join me in my tribute to this novel, and my admiration for its author.