"England eh. It's so...organised. And flat."
— Manda Tassy
A 2010 novel by Alan Warner set a few years after the events of The Sopranos (Warner) wherein the characters from the first novel reunite at Gatwick Airport for a last-minute package holiday.
Provides examples of:
- Abortion Fallout Drama: Kay recounts how her parents were upset about her Teen Pregnancy but ended up somewhat begrudgingly supporting her decision to terminate for reasons motivated by class more than anything else - they expected her to go to university. As conflicted as Kay was about her pregnancy at the time, she doesn't seem to have any lingering regrets about her choice. However, she knows that Manda believes herself to be morally superior to Kay because she chose to go through with her own pregnancy with Sean.
- Almost Kiss: Kay and Finn almost kiss when Kay tries to comfort Finn in an airport bathroom.
- Ambiguous Situation: It’s never really clarified just how close Finn and Ava are. Finn mentions hearing Ava dream in French, which suggests that they may have shared a bed at some point.
- It's also unclear if Chell, Kylah and Manda know that Kay and Finn had sex when they were teenagers. Manda knows about the threesome, and she saw Finn and Kay kiss in the Mantrap
- Arcadia: When Ava mentions going back to her parents’ house rather than staying in her digs at Oxford, Finn has a flashback to the two of them swimming in the idyllic river not far from the house.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Kylah can’t believe that Boots have started organising their condom selection by size. Chell speculates that guys must go in and buy a packet of Extra Large for themselves and claim any smaller ones are for a younger brother.
- Call-Back: In The Sopranos (Warner), Fionnula admits that she wishes that Kay would feel jealous at seeing her flirt with other people. Throughout the The Stars in the Bright Sky, it’s heavily implied that Kay feels jealous at seeing her and Ava being so close.
- Continuity Nod: The book opens with some of the girls sitting at the back of the bus, much like they did on the journey down to the Capital in The Sopranos (Warner).
- Chell mentions that she’s been missing her dog, Selwyn, who makes a brief appearance in the first book, since moving in with Kylah.
- We find out that the statue of the Virgin Mary on the roof of the school has been upgraded with a floodlight, with the unfortunate side effect of making it look like she’s about to take a penalty kick.
- The narration mentions that everyone except Ava had once looked up to the stained glass window in the chapel at school in the same way they look up at the yellow-and-black illuminated airport signs.
- The third chapter in “Saturday” opens with a table detailing the girls’ orders from McDonald's like the one seen in the first book when they visited Edinburgh.
- “If you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly bear” gets recited by Manda, Chell and Kylah.
- Drawing Straws: Kay, Kylah and Chell draw lots for who has to share a room with Manda in the hotel using a selection of condoms Kylah had purchased for the holiday.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Kylah and Chell bring vanity cases full of makeup to the airport, something that seems less likely since the bags would have to be checked due to the rules restricting the volume of liquids that can be taken as hand luggage.
- Kylah stops a potential retake of a picture because she only has 36 photos that she can take with her disposable camera.
- When Chell notices how many old people there are in the Flight Deck bar, she jokes about asking them what they did in the war. As the Second World War recedes further out of living memory, there are fewer and fewer people who can answer that question.
- Manda brought photos of Sean with her just so she could show them to Finn. Of course nowadays most people would keep their photos on their phone.
- When Manda tries to draw Kylah and Chell into a conversation about whether or not Finn and Ava are sleeping together, Kylah feels like she needs to “defend” Finn from this accusation, rather than just saying that it doesn’t matter if Finn and Ava are in a relationship or call Manda out for being a homophobic bigot when Manda declares how “disgusting” she finds the whole idea. On top of that, it’s Manda accusing Kylah of fancying Ava that offends Kylah enough for her to leave the pub, ostensibly to join Finn and Kay in their search for Manda’s passport back at the hotel.
- Disappeared Dad: Sean’s dad, who doesn’t bother to stay in touch and rarely contributes any financial support to Sean’s upkeep.
- Double Entendre: Manda claims that boys won’t be able to tell that she’s not a natural blonde since “[her] collar matches [her] cuffs.”
- Epigraph: The fact that it comes from an unfinished novel hints at the abruptness of the book's own ending....K was haunted by the feeling that he was losing himself or wandering into a strange country...a country so strange that not even the air had anything in common with his native air, where one might die of strangeness, and yet whose enchantment was such that one could only go and lose oneself further...
- Everybody Smokes: Manda, Chell and Kylah all light up immediately after getting off the Hotel Hoppa bus. Kay doesn’t, implying that she’s quit smoking at some point during the Time Skip.
- Firemen Are Hot: The girls joke about getting rescued from the hedge maze by a sexy fireman.
- Foreign Queasine: Manda is grossed out by paella, particularly the “sea cockroaches” in it.
- Foreshadowing: Some of the pop culture references to Moulin Rouge! and the second series of the UK edition of Big Brother may alert the reader to the fact that the story is set in 2001, causing them to question why there’s no mention of 9/11 until it happens in the book’s final scene.
- When Manda first realises that she can’t find her passport, Kylah suggests that she might have zipped it into her boot along with her cash. Manda doesn’t check, but when Ava unzips Manda’s boot after she’s passed out drunk in their hotel room, she finds the passport.
- Gag Lips: Chell mentions having seen Mick Jagger on VH 1 and says that his lips look like "a tapeworm being electrocuted".
- Generation Xerox: Kylah mentions that her younger sister and her friends are absolute tearaways that would have made the Sopranos blush even in their heyday.
- Gratuitous French: The narration makes mention of the girls’ "vast extent of equipage".
- Irony: A brief example when Manda fills Finn in on goings-on in the Port while she’s been away at university.Manda: There’s a new bar too called the Event.Finn: Oh, and what happens there then?Manda: Eh, nothing much.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Manda is horrified at the idea of Kylah possibly fancying Mick Jagger. Kylah points out that he was quite good-looking in The '60s.
- Literary Allusion Title: Title is taken from a line in Away in a Manger.
- Lots of Luggage: Four of the girls have seven cases between them. Kylah and Chell both bring full-size vanity cases along with their suitcases to carry all their makeup.
- Lower-Class Lout: The girls are disappointed to see several tracksuit-wearing and tabloid-reading patrons in the Flight Deck bar because it kills their buzz at the idea of jetting off on holiday being something exotic.
- My Local: The Gatwick Village Inn, where the girls spend part of the Saturday, is done in the style of a rustic country pub.
- On the way to Hever Castle, the girls pass a pub called the Henry VIII.
- Nepotism: Chell finds it pretty suspect that the older women working at the tourist office have been able to get mortgages, particularly since one of them is married to a cop who was transferred in to the Port, while she can’t get a mortgage and can barely afford the rent on her shared flat with Kylah.
- It’s pretty clear that Manda only has her job at the salon because her big sister is the owner.
- No Accounting for Taste: Manda says that she’s glad not to be married to Sean’s dad because, having seen the rest of the group’s parents, she doesn’t feel like marriage has anything to offer:"Getting old in marriage means having sex less and less and farting more and more in each other’s company, until your life is just one big, long fart."
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The book shows how the dynamic in the group has changed since Orla's death and Finnoula and Kay's respective departures from the Port for university.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Manda constantly snipes at the rest of the group, but at Kay in particular.
- Poverty Food: Chell was upset with Manda for eating her variety-size pack of Coco Pops after overstaying her welcome at hers and Kylah’s housewarming party since some days she often doesn’t have much else to eat.
- A Simple Plan: The book starts out with the girls arriving at Gatwick Airport with a plan to book a last-minute package holiday.
- Slobs vs. Snobs: While the first book touches on themes of class, it becomes more overt here, with the group more becoming more divided along the lines of who is studying at university (Finn, Kay and Ava) and who isn’t (Kylah, Chell and Manda).
- Stock "Yuck!": Chell doesn’t understand how Manda can like pork scratchings because they’re "
like scabs from the willy of a skanky boy." - There's No Place Like Home: Kylah agrees that Manda is too small-minded to really cope with life outside the Port, but she doesn’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong with being comfortable with where you’re from since that’s how you should feel about your home.
- Time Skip: Takes place a few years after the events of The Sopranos. The exact amount of time that's passed is only fully clarified when the girls watch the live news coverage of 9/11 from a television in an airport bar.
- "Ugly American" Stereotype: Chell complains to the others about the Americans she meets in her job at the tourist information office.
- Unusual Euphemism: When passing a teenage girl on the moving walkway wearing a short skirt, Manda exclaims that she could nearly see the girl’s "down-town bonanza."
- She also refers to prawns as "sea cockroaches".
- You Are Fat: The rest of the group fat-shame Manda when she’s out of earshot.
