The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven

by Alan Warner

For a playboy like Manolo — handsome, fastidious and more than a little vain — to be told by his doctor that he is HIV-Positive is, it would seem, the end of everything. Alan Warner’s fifth novel delights and provokes with vivid, erotic flashbacks to play back Manolo’s life in passionate Technicolor.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2006

About the author

Note: There is more than one Alan Warner, this is the page for the award-winning Scottish novelist. For books by other people bearing the same name see Alan Warner

Alan Warner (born 1964) is the author of six novels: the acclaimed Morvern Callar (1995), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; These Demented Lands (1997), winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos (1998), winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man Who Walks (2002), an imaginative and surreal black comedy; The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006), and The Stars in the Bright Sky (2010), a sequel to The Sopranos. Morvern Callar has been adapted as a film, and The Sopranos is to follow shortly. His short story 'After the Vision' was included in the anthology Children of Albion Rovers (1997) and 'Bitter Salvage' was included in Disco Biscuits (1997). In 2003 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. In 2010, his novel The Stars in the Bright Sky was included in the longlist for the Man Booker Prize.

Alan Warner's novels are mostly set in "The Port", a place bearing some resemblance to Oban. He is known to appreciate 1970s Krautrock band Can; two of his books feature dedications to former band members (Morvern Callar to Holger Czukay and The Man Who Walks to Michael Karoli). Alan Warner currently splits his time between Dublin and Javea, Spain.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another amazing book by Alan Warner - he's really become my all time favourite writer this year. The review quote on the back is right, "reminded of our reasons for reading novels at all": my thoughts exactly. So many striking/ funny/ touching observations...And the language is spectacular, very poetic without the slightest hint of trying too hard to write Literature (which is a big problem with many authors). I can't understand for the life of me why Alan Warner isn't one of the most popular writers of our time!

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't really enjoy this one. It kind of meandered too slowly for me and didn't hold my attention.

[Spiros · Rating 3 out of 5]

A major departure for Alan Warner, this novel is set somewhere on the Costa del Sol, in a city which might be Malaga (Warner's protagonist gives a longitude and latitude which would place the coastal city well inland). Our hero, Manolo "Lolo" Follana, runs a successful design firm. He is a cultured philistine, who hates music, cinema, and books equally; he is fastidious, a hypochondriac, and more than a bit of an areshole. When his friend Dr. Tanis diagnoses him HIV positive, Lolo is thrown into a reckoning of his past deeds, and his past wives and lovers. In the middle of this Proustian exercise, Lolo is confronted by Ahmed Omar, a Somali refugee living on the streets of the city, whose life poses an existential threat to Lolo, and with whom Lolo eventually and tenuously establishes something that resembles a friendship.

I feel that this novel would have made an excellent vehicle for Antonio Banderas, when it was published in 2006.

[Grant McDougall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by this compared to the four other books that I've read by this author. The characters were hard to warm to or feel any interest or connection with and the writing was stilted and stodgy.

[Nickole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! His best book so far.

[Melly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that shows the range of Alan Warner's style...set in what seems to be Spain (though they never really say) about a man who discovers he has a fatal disease that sets him off on a re-evaluation of his life- past, present, and future. These characters have their own distinct style and dialect, and the ending is confusing and mystical enough to have you arguing "what it all means" with others who have read it.

Warning: as good as this book is, it does contain a rape scene - something I abhor reading (or watching in a movie). Despite this, I still give the book a good review.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

What you'd expect from Alan Warner: lots of quirky little stories woven together into a greater narrative. In this case, a grand character sketch of one man's life. The style is a little overwrought, but it doesn't take too much away from the book.

[Jank Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warner switches out the highlands for a sun burnt jaunt - Houellebecq meets Bolano with a subtle dose of Proust. 4.5