|
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tale of Moral Vandalism, 1 Mar 2003
Like a lot of People , I was introduced to Alan Warner`s work by Lynne Ramsey`s film adaptation of Morvern callar. Having never read a book quite like Morvern Callar before, I was almost reluctant to throw myself in to the slightly twisted world of Alan Warner once again. Thankfully, The Sopranos exhibits everything that made Morvern Callar so great and then some!Warners Third novel spans a day in the life of six school girl sopranos on a trip to a national singing contest in the city. Freed from the conservatism of a small port community, the girls embark on a subversive trail of moral vandalism, self discovery and drunken shopping. As with his two previous novels, Warner combines working class slang with a touch of the great Beat writers. The result is that Warner`s style is often hard to focus on. The reader spends the first few pages trying to comprehend just what Warner is telling us. However, slowly the reader is pulled in to a compelling narrative and the novel becomes surprisingly easy to read and impossible to put down. The beauty of The Sopranos is that Warner is able to understand the nature of teenage relationships. Warner highlights how even the strongest group of friends are divided to some extent by their own personal and social insecurites. Some times funny, sad and moving, Warner examins, but never judges, the motives of a directionless generation who after the failure of socialism in the 80`s and the triumph of consumer culture during the 90s feel they have no real future. The Sopranos of the title serve as a mirror to highlight the issues that occupy all teenage minds, yet through their own destruction of convervative moral standards, the girls are able to achieve liberation, no matter how short lived this maybe. The Sopranos is a wonderful read and everything a novel should be.
|
by Alan Warner
by Alan Warner
by Alan Warner
by Alan Warner
by Alasdair Gray
