Adrian Turpin
Girl Power
The Stars in the Bright Sky
By Alan Warner
Jonathan Cape 400pp £12.99
Here come the girls, as the adverts say, and they are still quite a handful. The last time we saw Manda, Kay, Kylah, Chell and Finn – in Alan Warner’s The Sopranos (1998) – they were running wild in Glasgow, on day release from their Catholic girls’ school in a Highland port town. That book represented an astonishing act of literary cross-dressing, as Warner uncannily channelled the thoughts and feelings of teenage girls, with their boy-hunger, boozing and body-piercing, as well as a dash of Sapphic romance. This highly enjoyable new instalment, The Stars in the Bright Sky, contains many of the same elements and displays a similar empathy. But the passing years have brought an inevitable shift of tone as youthful exuberance is tempered by the wider world’s demands.
Wisely, Warner does not choose to jump forward a whole decade – how depressing would that tale of mortgages, divorces and faded dreams be? Instead, the action picks up just four years after The Sopranos. Now in their early twenties, the ‘right wee gang’ of old are gathering
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm