Rowland Manthorpe
Highland Games
Alan Warner has written six previous books of electric impersonation, placing neon-tinged phrases in the mouths of characters far removed from his actual self. His great first novel, Morvern Callar, was written in the Scots dialect of a working-class, female Mersault; the brilliant The Sopranos was told in the hooched-up babble of a group of Catholic schoolgirls. The further from himself Warner goes, the more inventive he seems to be. It makes a certain kind of sense, then, to find his most autobiographical work to date told in his most subdued voice.
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