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The Sopranos
The Sopranos
Jan 13, 2026 2:20 PM

Author:Alan Warner

The Sopranos

NOW A SELL-OUT PLAY: OUR LADIES OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR

The choir from Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls is being bussed to the national finals in the big, big city. And it's an important day for The Sopranos - Orla, Kylah, (Ra)Chell, Amanda Konky and Fionnula (the Cooler) - pub-crawling, shoplifting and body-piercing being the top priorities. Then it's time to lose that competition - lose, because a nuclear sub has just anchored in the bay and, tonight, the Man Trap disco will be full of submariners on shore-leave. There is no time for delays. . .

But after the fifth bottle of alco-pop up the back of the bus it's clear that all is not going to plan, for anyone. The Sopranos are never going to be the same.

'Compassionate and riotously funny. It is a long time since I read a novel which had me rocking with laughter' -The Times

Reviews

In a spill of vivid and corruscating language... Alan Warner has emerged as a writer of great inventiveness

—— Annie Proulx

Wonderful... humane, unique, a page-turner with a neat series of bombshells at the end

—— Daily Telegraph

Warner provides every nuance of the characters in a sustained tour de force... This is the most profound of Warner's books. His sense of place and atmosphere remains extraordinarily intense

—— Guardian

Wonderful... Humane, unique, a page-turner with a neat series of bombshells at the end

—— Daily Telegraph

Wickedly funny... Warner can combine literary style with go-anywhere demotic humour... Like St Trinians with condoms and male nudity

—— Independent

More wild fun from the outrageously talented bright young thing

—— Scotsman

This is the most profound of Warner's books

—— Guardian

I re-read the "Dance" every five years or so and always find something new – the world has changed but the characters are evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life.

—— Daisy Goodwin

He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply

—— The New York Review of Books

A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu ... Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's.

—— New York Times

[A] comic masterpiece

—— Irish Times

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

—— The Telegraph

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English Literature.

—— Melvyn Bragg

It's full of insights and recognisable characters. Remarkable.

—— Loyd Grossman , Daily Express

Wonderfully observed and true, funny, stylistically dazzling and soothing and long enough to take one through any lockdown.

—— Matthew Kneale , The Times

A passionate, hilarious look at mid-twentieth-century Britain.

—— Jeremy Paxman , Gentleman's Journal

Something I know I love ... Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which I could read endlessly.

—— Tracey Thorn , Daily Mail

I’m bowled over, hooked and, hurrah, there are 11 more volumes to go as Jenkins grows up. Terrific.

—— Daily Mail

A highly accomplished debut, this is a chilling portrait of racial tension, social immorality, betrayal and love, and also an atmospheric examination of the end of innocence.

—— The Lady Magazine

The writing is strong and though the sections featuring Gay's earlier life lose momentum, the story picks up pace when the girls' paths become entwined and the conclusion is compelling and thrillingly macabre.

—— Telegraph

This fictional account of a true story gives a darkly shocking version of the events surrounding this tragic case.

—— Good Book Guide

Brilliantly melds a factual post-war murder into a dark fictional tale

—— Telegraph
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