I love Welsh. But recently some of his books (notably: Crime) have been fairly awful. Also, prequels tend to be pretty poor (i.e. Star Wars) and usually leave me think, "ah...that's why that story was left out of the first book." Skagboys had me feeling the exact same way. It started great and th...
There were parts of this short story collection which I absolutely hated. The writing, the characters, the plots, the pointless homophobia and the pointless misogynistic orientation of the plots. It certainly started out painfully labored as a collection with a couple of dire rambling stories sto...
The title of this book really says it all. Most of the stories are really very dull and uninteresting, and kind of confusing because it becomes tough to keep track of which character from Welsh's universe we're learning more about. One story, about aliens who learned everything they know about Ea...
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins revolves around the relationship between two women - Lucy Brennan and Lena Sorenson. Lucy is a personal trainer who found herself in a position one night that brought out some bravery. She was stopped in the middle of the road at night with two men running at her, t...
Three Tales of Chemical Romance is a collection of three stories:Lorraine Goes to LivingstoneFortune's Always Hiding: A Corporate RomanceThe Undefeated: An Acid House RomanceLorraine Goes to Livingstone is a strangely feminist story - an 'historical (read: trashy) romance' writer, Rebecca, suffer...
Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; Choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrrass...
Glue is populated with strong characters. The four main friends the reader follows - Gally, Juice Terry, N-Sign Ewart, and Billy Birrell - stick together through thick and thin. From primary school to soccer riots (which is an hilarious scene) to teenage clubbing to middle age, the four remain fr...
Irvine Welsh was the literary hero among my generation of working-class Central Belt Scots for his graphic novels set in Edinburgh sink estates, riddled with sex, drugs, violence, and written in dextrously rendered phonetic dialect. I avoided reading Welsh, since a witless moron at my school rate...
This was the second book of Welsh’s that I have read, the first being of course the incomparable Trainspotting. This was a collection of short stories and a novella, some of which was along similar lines as his famous first novel, and other pieces that looked in other directions. Throughout the r...
This is the sequel to Trainspotting, and takes place ten years later. I've heard a lot of mixed reviews on this one, always comparing it to Trainspotting, but I have to say I like it just as much, if not more than, its predecessor.It's slightly less intense than Trainspotting and shows sex rather...
'Filth' sucks you deep into the disturbed, poetic, perverted, brilliant and fevered brain of Detective Sargent Bruce 'Robbo' Robertson. Bruce is in line for a big promotion to DI, and will stop at nothing to get it. Eliminating the competition with psychopathic precision, whilst indulging in his ...
Yet he recognised it straight away on the phone, without checking caller ID. Not that it would have come up, as they had long since lost touch. Their mother had died a few years back, after Jim had moved to the USA. Jim returned for the funeral, but had headed back to LA immediately afterwards. H...
America is not a big country, he remembers. He’s jumped across it before in aircraft; New York–Chicago–New Orleans–Vegas–San Francisco–LA. It was like going round Scotland in a bus, only at ground level you could see the vastness of the country in the changing landscape. One function of wealth is...
It had rained and the fence posts had rotted and the wild dogs had got in. Now there were no chickens left. He wasn’t concentrating. He felt dizzy: dizzy and sick. The huge, brightly coloured Star Trek: The Final Frontier poster on the wall, the one Ian had given him, which showed a Starship Ente...
Looks in awe at the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. He wonders who has more money, the Pope or the Queen: the feudal Roman Catholic Church or the British monarchy and aristocracy. Speculates whether, as a painter and decorator, it is better to be a Catholic or a Protestant. He’s scared at f...
There was another human with the casual mob. Tazak, who had grown used to differentiating members of the species, thought he looked like Mikey. The Cyrastorian glanced over at his colleague. — What the fuck are these cunts daein here? They've no goat authorisation. Mikey smiled. — Ah gied thum au...
I keep it in the walk-in closet, on the top shelf. It contains a letter, a small notebook, and thirty-six high-contrast black-and-white photographs. The letter is from a woman called Melanie Clement. Dear Lena, Your ex-boyfriend—also, now, my ex-boyfriend—is a twisted, evil, manipulative psychopa...