Thursday, May 17, 2007

DH and his mum at his graduation. He graduated in Natural Sciences with Chemistry with first class honours! I'm sooo very proud of him. HOORAY for G!

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Review of The Man Who Walks by Alan Warner

Alan Warner is one of the current new generation of Scottish writers who like to tell us how it is in Scottish life – a violent, scabrous, ribald, drug addled and alcohol fuelled culture which descends into chaos and surrealism at times. In a similar vein to Irvine Welsh.

Alan Warner comes from Oban and bases much of his writing there, only he calls it The Port. In fact he has a thing about giving people or places nicknames in the Man Who Walks (TMWW from this point on). For example, the main protagonist is The Nephew who comes across as a youngish guy who works for his family doing odd jobs and looking after his uncle who is otherwise known at TMWW. There’s Boomtown a village up the coast from Oban, although I’m not sure where this refers to. Aluminiumville, which is a reference to Fort William and so on.
It doesn’t spoil the story if you’re not sure where he’s referring to but if you do then it gives you a sense of time a sense of time and place.

The book starts off with the TMWW already disappeared but he’s made off with £27000 from the family business. The Nephew is promptly despatched to find him and bring him home. There follows a series of hilarious and ribald exploits as the Nephew makes his way slowly up to Ballachulish. Apparently, there’s a hotel bar where he is famous for heading to.
And so the travels go. He reaches Ballachulish after 3 or 4 days on the lash and drugged up to this eyeballs, finds he hasn’t been there, he’s not even allowed into the place, then he decides to head up to Aluminiumville and look for him there. Cue more partying!

The book is a bit episodic in some ways, with some philosophical musings in between. Some of the situations, our hero finds himself in are hilarious though and have to be read to be believed. For example, the time when he is in his ex-girlfriend’s house and is so stoned, pissed, high on antihistamines that he can’t find the toilet and ends up peeing into his ex-girlfriend’s daughter’s crying/peeing doll is one that takes the biscuit.

Towards the end he runs out of steam and his past catches up with him and thinks take an unpleasant turn. I won’t spoil the denouement for you but will say that this was as good as anything that I’ve read by Mr Warner and would recommend it to anybody who is a fan of his style of prose. Five stars out of five!