Beowulf
A new verse translation by Seamus Heaney
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25 hardcover, 213 pages

In his translation of the canonized epic poem, Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney melds the sing-song music of Old English verse with the earthy language of his Northern Irish uncles. The result is a work of lyric grit which revitalizes the saga of Beowulf, warrior-king of Scandinavia, who pits his steel and honor against the ravenous monsters of hell and his own wyrd, or intractable fate. In order to prove his worth, the hero defeats the monster Grendel with his bare hands-"sinews split/and the bone-lappings burst"-then swims to the bottom of a dark lake to battle the monster's hag mother, "the one who had haunted those waters/who had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds/for a hundred seasons."

Back in the mead halls, Beowulf and his thanes recount their victories and extol the virtues of their warrior's life. Yet, the poem-written just after Christianity eclipsed pagan societies and codes-exudes a terrible sense of the frailty of even the greatest men under the ultimate will of God. Beowulf and his clan, the Geats, face a doomed future at the hands of a fire-spewing dragon and hordes of neighboring tribes. Heaney's ear for robust language and compassionate intellect catapult this Old English epic into contemporary consciousness, so that the clashes between Geats and Swedes seem all too similar to present day conflicts in Bosnia or the Middle East.

Beowulf flaunts a boyish flair-codes of martial honor and battles against foul beasts-but it also offers some type of spiritual instruction alongside glimpses of emotional honesty. As Beowulf contemplates his final battle with the dragon, the poet notes that "His fate hovered near, unknowable but certain," and this frank understanding of human impermanence, bolstered by Heaney's lyric sensibility, has kept the mythic saga relevant for over a thousand years.

-Douglas Schnitzspahn

Fear not, this is no "as seen on the hit television series" rip-off. Far from a modern mafia family, these sopranos (Scottish, not Italian) are the prima donnas of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls Choir. Fionnula, Orla, Chell, Kylah and Manda are bussed from their seaside village to the big city for a choir competition. Concerned only with losing in enough time to get home to the bars (a submarine has docked for the night promising scores of horny young sailors), the girls embark on a day of drunken indulgence.

In his third novel, Alan Warner sucks readers into the bittersweet lives of these teenagers with an uncannily accurate, dark rendering of the teenage female. Warner allows the reader entrance into the inner circle of the sopranos and unveils the intricacies of the friendship. As he jumps from character to character, we see the hopelessness and suffocation of their small town lives. Yet, even in a group where pregnancy can earn one revered status among peers ("Our Lady has had 28 pregnancies so far this year"), the girls' concerns remain universal-from boys and clothes to sexuality and mortality.

Warner's Scottish dialect lends a richness to his characters unlike a typical American teen. Words like "snogging," "shagging" and "spunk" lose the crassness of their American counterparts and instead give the girls a sassy strength. Their rebellious actions are ammunition in their fight against the suffocation and hypocrisy of their daily lives.

With this wonderfully irreverent look at life through teenage eyes, Warner laughs at everything from religion to sex. I certainly laughed along with him. By the end of the day, he leaves no one for the sopranos to depend on but each other. I wasn't sure whether to cry at their despair, or envy their bond.