These Demented Lands

by Alan Warner

Paperback, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

823.914

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Vintage (2007), Paperback, 224 pages

Description

"An aircrash investigator haunts the hinterlands of an island - around the isolated honeymoon hotspot, the Drome Hotel - gathering the fallen pieces of planes that have been used in makeshift sheds and fences; but what kind of jigsaw is he really is he really assembling as he paces the runway? A young woman makes landfall on the island, crossing the interior to arrive at the Drome Hotel- desperate, strange - and strangely familiar. . Meanwhile, DJ Cormorant is trying to organise The Big One, a rave on the adjacent airstrip, and from all over These Demented Lands come twisted characters - The Arganout, the Knife Sharpener, The Devil's Advocate and the Crazed troupe of Cattle rovers - converging for one final Saturday night at the Drome Hotel

User reviews

LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan

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.

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