Rowland Manthorpe

Highland Games

The Deadman’s Pedal

By

Jonathan Cape 376pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

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.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • RT : Founded in 1979, is a trusted independent source for reviews of new books across a variety of genres. A… ,
    • RT : Here we are - "Shelf Indulgence" by Ed Potten, a wonderful read, well worth your time: @Lit_Review,
    • 'Like going to a party hoping to get away as quickly as politeness allowed and at 4am finding myself still engrosse… ,
    • 'Neville never shed his sense of being the junior, and perhaps least-deserving Chamberlain.' From the archive, Mic… ,
    • 'The erecting and immediate destruction of a series of straw men rather detracts from what is for the most part an… ,
    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    Follow Us