Rating: 
Summary: Massively Entertaining!!!
Review: A great summer read or any other time of the year. It's the best book I've read in a long time. Some of the dialogue was a bit impenetrable at first but once you get used to it the book has a great many pleasures. The part with Orla, the shoelaces, and the parrot was hysterical. I agree with the other reader who said this would make a great movie, just film what's in the book. Only an idiot could make a bad film from this.
Rating:
Summary: outstanding welsh-esque coming of age novel
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not as good as Morvern Callar
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun romp but not ground breaking
Review: Although I enjoyed the antics of "The Sopranos" as they are let loose in the city, I wouldn't call this a great book. I also found the writing style difficult at the beginning and had to re-read paragraphs to understand what was being said. I felt like I was stuck in an episode of Eastenders for much of the book.It's a fun romp with humourous and touching sections, but not the best book I've read this year. I'd really like to give it 3.5 stars but I'll round up because it was a good summer read.
Rating:
Summary: Charming. How could it NOT be?
Review: Few heterosexual males are going to get bored reading about over-sexed schoolgirls, but this book is much more than a sexual travelogue. Warner gives a real feel for the situation that these girls are in -- poverty, class struggles, family problems, insane nuns, etc. His use of language and even punctuation are pretty innovative -- a little hard hard to plow through, sometimes, but adding to the reading experience rather than subtracting from it. I consider it pretty high praise to say that a book really took me to a place I have never been before, but THE SOPRANOS has done just that.
Rating:
Summary: Harpy Diem
Review: 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."
Rating:
Summary: Harpy Diem
Review: 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."
Rating:
Summary: A Great And Difficult Book
Review: 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 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Tender, Funny, and Sad? Which Book Was That?
Review: I ordered The Sopranos based on the reviews posted online, but now I wish I had gone to a bookstore and thumbed through it first, because if I had, I would not have wasted my money. I was expecting a good naturedly raunchy, fun read about Catholic school girls gone wild during a night on the town. I looked forward to the tender, funny, and sad parts that were promised along with the bawdiness. Instead, I threw the book down in disgust less than halfway through, unable to read any further. Instead of snickering at the antics of a group of oversexed teenagers, I actually found myself feeling ill after reading the chapter detailing one girl's attempted rape of a nearly comatose cancer patient, complete with graphic descriptions of the dying man's loss of control over his bodily functions as she molested him. That anyone can refer to this scene as "grimly funny" is astounding. Exactly what was funny about it? Would it be just as amusing if the roles were reversed and an adult forced himself on an unconscious child? I continued to read for a while longer, although I was having difficulty with the unfamiliar Scottish dialect (while not fair to criticize the book on these grounds, since it was written in the UK, after all, I wonder how accessible this makes it to the average US reader). I got as far as the gory description of the death of a litter of puppies brought about by one of the girls' stupidity. At that point, I finally decided it just wasn't worth the effort, since none of what I read before giving up was tender, funny or sad enough to take away the lingering bad taste in my mouth.
Rating:
Summary: I'M IN THE MINORITY -- WORST BOOK I'VE READ THIS YEAR
Review: I thought that not only was this the worst book I've read all year, it is undoubtedly the worst book I've ever read. Granted, it takes awhile to get used to the speech with English words not having any endings but that was the easy part. Not only was the book fragmented, it was confusing and totally without merit. I could not find one redeeming quality in this piece of work and can't imagine it being a bestseller in England.
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