Customer Reviews

The Man Who Walks

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Warner's fourth book bears many marks of similarity to his first three, both in subject matter, imagination, setting, and unevenness. Set in the same part of Scotland's Western Highlands, the story revolves around the port town of Oban. As in Morvern Callar and to a lesser extent These Demented Lands, there's a central figure wandering the landscape in semi-picaresque fashion in pursuit of a large sum of cash. The protagonist is "The Nephew" a semi-homeless tinker whose legendary wild uncle (the title character) has stolen a pub's World Cup pool money. As he wanders the highlands a step behind his uncle, the Nephew (who is a bit of an oddball himself) manages to get in situations where he has weird sex, takes odd drugs, pukes, drinks, urinates in a doll's head, feasts with nobility, and gets mixed up with an inordinate number of total weirdoes. Warner's fictional Highlands are a sort of rural New York where every time you turn around there's some madman who's all to happy to include you in his world.

Warner's first two books, especially These Demented Lands, exhibited a kind of wild borderline surrealism that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. These Demented Lands didn't really have enough of a narrative line and ultimately fell apart, however here he's got just enough of a plot to keep everything together. The Nephew's quest is often hilarious, often horrifying, and wholly imaginative, while at times veering off course and just barely holding together. Warner's clearly a talented writer and this is one of his better efforts, but I'd still suggest trying his much more accessible The Sopranos before you delve into this.