The Sopranos: A Novel [Paperback]

Alan Warner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: July 10, 2000

As the choir from Our Lady of Perpetual Succor for Girls, in rural Scotland, is bussed into the big city to participate in the national singing finals, five of the teenage schoolgirls let loose for a night of pub crawling, shoplifting, and body piercing. And, since a nuclear submarine has just anchored in the bay, the local nightclub will be full of sailors on leave. After a bout of preparatory drinking, the girls are ready for their big night-and what a night it will become. An outrageous tale of adolescent debauchery, The Sopranos opens the lid on desire and excess in all its grim glory. A huge bestseller in England, it is a remarkable mix of near-violent energy and tender compassion, and confirms Warner, the writer "who defines the '90s as clearly as Ian McEwan defined the '70s and Jay MacInerney the '80s" (Time Out) as "the best of the new Scottish writing" (Salon).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If there's any justice, Alan Warner's third novel, The Sopranos, will lead to a sudden fad for artificially shortened kilt skirts, bright shoelaces, and flaming sambuca shots. As it is, we might have to settle for the sopranos themselves, six memorably vile-mouthed Catholic schoolgirls sent from their drab port town to "the big, big city" for the Scottish national choir finals. There Warner follows them as they shop, smoke, eat Big Macs, consume staggering amounts of alcohol, and pay no attention whatsoever to the competition. Winning, after all, would defeat their central goal: returning in time for the slow dances at the Mantrap and the promise of submariners on leave. In the end, it turns out that the nuclear submarine has stopped in their harbor only to unload a dead sailor, and the girls must console themselves with alcohol, sex, a veritable inferno of fireworks, and even one heartbreakingly courageous kiss.

By turns bawdy and tender, funny and sad, The Sopranos faces adolescence head-on, without sentiment or false hope. Youth, for these girls, is precious precisely because they have so little to look forward to. When their friend becomes pregnant, she's already "devoured the few opportunities for the wee bit sparkle that was ever going to come her way." When the nuns' parrot--who likes to spout Spanish obscenities during Mass--escapes from the school, his bright colors are "like a happiness that wasn't allowed below such skies, against these curt roof angles of slate and granite." Theirs is a grim, circumscribed world, but the sopranos shine like tropical birds against the background of gray. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Hottie-tottie Scots girls slosh and snog their way through Warner's (Morvern Callar) bacchanalian novel wi' no a care for the Queen's English and with envious contempt for the "trendy-****ing-city-lassie fashion victims" they encounter on a choir trip to London. The Sopranos, appointed leaders and cool girls of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, chain-smoke and doctor their hemsAand see the choir's trip to the capital to compete in the St. Columba Choirs final as an opportunity to drink themselves silly and add to the notches on their French Connection belts. Away from their small coastal town the convent girls wriggle free of their inhibitions, leaving their striking poverty, dysfunctional families and village gossip behind. Their youth and vulnerability (extreme and fiercely guarded) do not accord with what they've already had to bear. Orla, suffering from Hodgkin's Disease, has not long to live; Fionulla ("the Cooler") keeps secrets about her sexuality; Kylah's beautiful voice is squandered on the "shite" band she sings with; Manda's so poor her father reuses her milky bathwater; (Ra)Chell has lost her two daddies to the sea; posh Kay is a dark horse, thought to be a "swot" who studies hard and rats. The pathos of these pretty young things in tight skirtsA"damaged goods," as one of the unsuspecting and peculiar men who falls in with them thinks to himselfAseeps in between the cracks of the restless, reckless adventure Warner stages for them. In pub after pub they tell stories on each other and get into scrapes, maintaining the buoyant, sanguine arrogance of youth and sexual power. Satirical, too, Warner's novel takes a final twist that proves these blaspheming, Christsaking little Catholic girls know surprisingly well the value of one's word. (Apr.) FYI: The Sopranos was a bestseller in England.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (July 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156012014
• ISBN-13: 978-0156012010
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,832,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bittersweet, October 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Sopranos: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars outstanding welsh-esque coming of age novel, June 16, 2004

By 

justthegoodstuff (atlanta, ga) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sopranos: A Novel (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful--The Best Book I Have Read in a Long Time!!!, August 7, 2001

By 

April (The Ninth Circle of....) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sopranos: A Novel (Paperback)

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.