These Demented Lands

This was a sequel I guess I would perhaps rather have done without. Taking up the thread right where the first book about Morvern Callar left off, this is still a book with a very different flavour. Too different, in my opinion. "These demented lands" is written in a style only loosely resembling the first book. The tall tales and frantic drinking and drugging is there, but where that in the first book contrasted with poetic attention to detail, here it's not really contrasting with anything. Things are frantic, flipped and - worst - abstract throughout. I also kind of miss Morvern herself. In the first book she's this quiet, strange girl that still is relateable, even when making some pretty weird choices. Here I mostly get the feeling of an empty vessel, someone things are happening to, but with very little real personality. I don't care much about the power triangle plot either.

Redeeming features are due to Warner's twisted imagination. All kind of weird stories told around campfires and drunken shananagans (and there are a lot of those) are still fun in a way that, despite all, feels warm and almost gentle. But I think I would have preferred to leave Morvern walking on that railroad track where she left off in the first book, rave baby, stolen manuscript, glittering kneecap and all. ( )