Scot Alan Warner’s first novel, Morvern Callar, brings together, in
a postmodern fashion, ancient Celtic and contemporary ‘New Age’
worldviews. The novel focuses on the depressed reality of Scottish youth
and culture as the title character, imprisoned by a moribund patriarchy,
adopts her suicide boyfriend’s identity as a means of reasserting both
her own and Scotland’s sovereignty. Crucial to this reassertion is
Morvern’s intuitive adoption of the character of the queens and druids
of Celtic mythology, but also significant is her fondness for contemporary
music’s postmodern aesthetic of dismemberment that, paradoxically,
engenders a womb-like watery space similar to that of the developing
global communications network.
“Look all around. The male god is dysfunctional. The goddess is
coming back.”
(Tomson Highway)
