Customer Reviews

The Sopranos

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Scotland's Alan Warner is one of the best and most original writers at
work today. The only reason I gave this, this third book, four stars
instead of five is because his two previous, Morvern Callar and These
Demented Lands were so much better.

From the title, you might think
this book has to do with the opera world. Hardly. It concerns the
fifth-form sopranos at Our Lady of Perpetual Succor School for Girls
in the Scottish village of Port. the plot concerns a day trip the
girls (Orla, Kylah, Chell, Manda and Fionnula) are making from their
small village school to the city for the national singing finals.
While these girls are superior sopranos with beautiful voices, they
really don't give a hoot about music or the singing competition.
These five girls are completely focused on their free afternoon in the
city where they fully intend to prowl the local pubs for attractive
prospects among the opposite sex.

A local McDonald's provides the
place to shed their school uniforms and don the sexy outfits they
consider more fitting. Somehow, Warner gets the descriptions of the
clothes exactly right, even down to the girls' underwear. With their
makeup and nail polish applied, the girls head off, some directly to
the pubs, some to buy CDs, etc., before meeting again for rehearsal
with Sister Condron.

The book is written in dialect and that takes a
little getting used to, but not much. It would, in fact, have
suffered greatly had Warner not written in dialect. The dialogue has
a perfect air of authenticity about it: this is exactly what naughty
girls at Catholic schools do and say when the Sisters' are occupied
elsewhere.

The outcome of the singing competition comes as no
surprise and the girls are exhilarated. They head to the town's local
disco, The Mantrap, where they manage to fill the night with slow
dances with a group of submariners from the nuclear submarine that has
just anchored in the bay. Here, too, Warner captures perfectly, the
thoughts and feelings of Catholic school girls. In fact, he may have
captured them a little too perfectly; we feel almost like voyeurs.
Dawn finds the girls gathered for breakfast at the local station
buffet "none appearing much worse for wear."

These are not
wealthy boarding school girls. Just the opposite. They are from
poor, working-class families, something that makes their situation in
the book all the more poignant and bittersweet. This is it. Youth is
really all these girls have. None of them really has much hope or
much of a chance of escaping the grim and bleak future their parents'
are now living.

The book is not perfect. In a story told by
Fionnula, she resurrects characters from Warner's two previous novels.
This story has a distinct feeling of simply being tacked on (as well
as being a little too reminiscent of Trainspotting) rather than being
an integral part of the story of the sopranos and their day in the
city. The girls' story is good enough as it is; we didn't need to be
reminded of anything else.

The plot in this book is obviously more
contrived than in Warner's first two novels and, at times, it borders
on the preposterous. And, while the girls are almost perfectly
characterized, Orla's actions sometimes ring a bit unbelievable. Her
desires, especially her sexual desires, are just a bit too
sophisticated for a seventeen year old girl who is battling cancer.
Still, Warner has done a next-to-perfect job in his creation of the
five girls who make up the sopranos.

The Sopranos is definitely a
commercial book, but commercial doesn't have to mean bad, especially
not when it's as well-written as this one is. Morvern Callar,
however, is still Warner's most memorable and unique character and
These Demented Lands is his tour de force to date, a book that was so
heady and surreal it seems almost impossible to top. While The
Sopranos is extremely well-written and is, by turns, funny, sad,
comic, hilarious and tragic, it is a book that fails to reach the
status achieved by his previous two. Warner is such a wonderful and
polished writer, though, that top them he will. In time.

After "slogging" (not in sopranos speak) through the first few pages of this exceptional story and getting used to the near-undecipherable vernacular of the sopranos, I was dead-on hooked. I can only describe this novel as a scottish female version of the movie "Go" or perhaps a tarantino-esque irvine welsh story, but that wouldn't do justice to the interludes of truth, meaning, and compassion that exist between outrageous scenes of cheerily lewd behavior. At the end, I knew each girl very closely and cared about the plights of each one - and, as in all good books, immediately wanted a sequel. So, you know what this story's about, just go grab it ASAP and thank me later, you won't be dissappointed.

This was one of the best books I have ever read. If you are not used to the dialogues and accents used, then you might want to think of someone speaking the words as you read them--it helped me a bit. It may seem confusing or fragmented the first time you read it, but it's well worth reading again, and makes more sense the second time round besides. It really is a remarkable work of fiction--like you are reading the girls' diaries or looking over their shoulders. And, I definitely agree with the reviewers who said it would make a greatr movie, but only if it is filmed verbatim as written. Hurray for Warner! For this is truly one of the best works of our era.

This is a gem of a book, and as others have noted, will make a great film. Warner's use of dialect in the novel is much more accessible than that of his countrymen James Kelman and Irvine Welsh. It's necessary, and not overdone. The Sopranos are a vivid, believeable collection of Catholic schoolgirls from the west coast of Scotland. They are lusty, naughty, loving, hating, ambivalent, caring, violent, sad--yet with a will to keep going. They're like high school kids the world over in the turn of the millenium... you'll love them, they'll shock you. You'll see girls just like them in New York and Tokyo and Paris and know they're similar in so many ways. Definitely a worthwhile read...

This work is as poignant a social comment as any I have recently read.

This novel turns an intimate spotlight on the plight of bored, rudderless Scottish schoolgirls trapped in a featureless port town whose only respite from the numbing drudgery of their existence is achieved through an astonishingly excessive alcohol intake and sex acts devoid even of affection.

The British quality press all say how funny this book is, with epithets like "wickedly funny" (Independent) and "riotously funny" (The Times). Yes there are some amusing slapstick scenes but this book is not purely a comedy.

This in an excellent novel. One starts with a certain mild distaste as one is introduced to the main protagonists but as time and the story progress one is drawn in to a realization of how these girls have been abandoned by our social culture and put-upon by their draconian and misguided school. This leads to a certain affection for these individuals, and their dispair (though most do not acknowledge it) becomes very tangible.

Perhaps the most telling observation is from a young lad who befriends one of the girls whose thought is "These chicks are the damaged goods."

Through the use of quirky spelling and a startling lack of punctuation (which take a little getting used to), the author captures with remarkable accuracy the girls' brash but amusing dialogue and the reader is left in no doubt that he is absolutely in touch with the sub-culture of that environment. The girls meet their situation with riotous rebellion and a dry humour that is very amusing, if not touching.

Especially well drawn is the discovery of a true sense of love in one of the girls, an emotion clearly previously unknown to her and one which leads her to a very courageous public stance.

This is the first book by Alan Warner that I have read. It certainly won't be the last.

I admit the accent kind of annoyed me at first. Then I got comfortable with it and settled into a story I could not put down. It's all the things the other reviewers say it is. Disgusting, funny, shocking, heartbreaking and above all gorgeously observed. My Scottish boyfriend turned me onto Warner in a debate about the existence of a "Scottish sexuality". This book and Warner's 'The Man Who Walks" won his argument for him.

You'll either love it or you'll fling it across the room in disgust. Maybe a bit of both. Warner is magic.

Five Catholic schoolgirls from a sleepy backwater descend on Edinburgh and try to cram a year's worth of debauchery into a single day. No matter that they've come to the big city to sing in a choir competition. Achieving pitch perfection isn't high on their agenda. Getting legless is. Warner's Scots prose, a veritable flayed and steaming haggis of savory bits, sputters out without "embarrassedness" the joys and horrors of drink and bodily functions. Kyla, Chell, Manda, Orla, and Finnoula (the Cooler) play a game of gross out one-upmanship, coaxing the refrain "Dinnae scum us out!" Only slowly do the sopranos emerge as distinct characters with vulnerable underbellies. The welcome introduction of English Kay, a bourgeois and well-spoken girl with a place at university, further emphasizes their collective, class bound nature. But the novel is far more Marx Brothers than Marx. Gags and jokes abound as the girls seize the day by the juggler. With more appetite than skirt, they follow Sambuca swilling Finnoula's creed that "If yur goan be a bear; be a grizzly bear."

Although his second book was better written, it did not have the same feeling as Morven Callar. I enjoyed The Sopranos, but if you are a first time Warner reader I would have to suggest Morvern.

Not a book on opera, definitely! But a book on life, sex, questions,religion, booze and the depressing landscapes of Scotland. Definitely much different than Morvern Callar, but it stays with you just the same. The best scene has to be the one with the Yankee tourists in the toilets -not sth to show back home! All the girls are hilarious and real towards what they feel and experience - a nice change from all the misery of youngsters gone astray... An excellent handling of language and a poisonous sense of humour. An excellent read thegether (as the author himself might say....)

If this isn't the best novel out of Europe this year, I'll eat my hat. This would make a hell of a movie! The characters are real, the plot develops with amazing skill, and it's as raunchy and side-splittingly funny as anything Irvine Walsh has done. The drunken debauchery and fun-crazed attitude of the teenage heroines of this story will make your eyes pop. Flaming zambucas and a large tray of tequila shots all round!