Trainspotting

More of a collection of loosely connected short stories than an actual novel, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh can be a difficult and depressing read but it can also be highly rewarding as well. I use the term read loosely as I actually listened to this book as read by Tam Dean Burn in a thick

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Scottish accent. His voice was perfectly suited to convey these stories of a group of young people in 1980’s Edinburgh who are either hooked on heroin or move in the same circles as the heroin users. I can’t praise this audio version enough, the reader totally made the book come alive. I laughed, cringed and cried my way through the life experiences of these characters.

Each chapter is narrated by a different character and it isn’t long before they are recognizable by their speaking patterns. The various characters all have their own well established identities and while Spud is the most vulnerable and likeable, Begbie is a violent sociopath, acts the hard man and is downright scary, Rent comes across as having the most intelligence in that he can see the downward spiral they are on and often thinks about kicking his habit but he can also be the most frustrating as he likes to philosophize on his problems and Scotland’s place in the world, yet does little to change things. Then there is Sick-Boy who has his own reptilian charm. He is totally amoral, openly displays contempt for women and yet women seem drawn to him. He often holds hilarious internal conversations with himself in the voice of Sean Connery and can display an effortless charm, but he is also the most shallow and callous of the group.

I can tell that this is going to be a book that stays with me, it’s unconventional style is one that I found captivating. Trainspotting was brutal, terrifying and, at times both heart breaking and very funny. Author Irvine Welsh has reached an almost cult-like status and this book is a good example of how this came to be.

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Yir a mess, but we widnae huv ye any other wey--ya cunt thit ye are. This epoch-defining novel and the associated film were huge, huge for me as I moved from introverted nerd to superstar wasted troublemaker in the late-mid '90s in Victoria, BC. Which seems absurd, right? What does a film about

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Scottish junkies in the '80s have to say to Canadian teens?


But that was just it. It was the thumping rainbow difference of it, the promise of vistas, the chance to hit the town with your pocket of whiskey and your bleached-out hair in your eyes; raise one eyebrow at the ladies, drive the security guard at A&B Sound to distraction, score some albums and feel all virtuous about it because hey, Joe Strummer wouldn't feel the loss. Jarvis Cocker would positively cheer you along. Ian Curtis had more immediate problems. Then, hit the park, the beach, ride bikes. Then, caffeine pill, ecstasy, lager, lager, lager, and go make some trouble with some rich kids


And imagine you'll be doing it forever. Renton and crew (and yeah we divvied up the identities all amongst us, me and my boys, and yeah the girls called me Sick Boy, and the ultimate reptilian exploitativeness of that character was occasion for much navelgazing on my part re why he was so attractive to me and what morality was and what kind of person I wanted to be) were 26, and of course that's at least in part what serious drug habits are, or begin as: the chance to reclaim your freedom, to take control of your space, to step into a twilit lovecat world where you set your own agenda. For a while, until it takes back with interest.


But the drugs were never really the centre of it for us, and their presence in this book certainly had very little to do why it appealed to me. All the existential dilemmas and pain of Trainspotting really have very little to do with junk: only Renton and Spud and Matty really ride the heroin train throughout (Sick Boy kicks at the very beginning). And yet everyone else is just as fucked up on speed or booze or rage or sex or thievery or having a virus in their blood. The drugs are irrelevant: this is a book about growing up poor and circumscribed, with low crumbling roofs and no horizons, and about what kind of people that produces. About their desperate efforts to bind themselves together with tribalism, and then their desperate efforts to kick back against it.


And so Welsh is simplistic, and juvenile, and misogynistic, but he has his finger on the pulse of something real. Here we were on the other side of the world, in an entirely different culture, with no heroin or football gangs or, like Weedjie Orange bastards or whatever, and yet so much of Trainspotting to me sounds just exactly like the everyday depression of growing up in a poor urban neighbourhood, amidst the post-Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney ruins of a proper working class, and looking for way to derive from that some excitement and colour and joy.


Not that things were as bad for us. But there are so many moments here that ring so true, and they're all the white-trash moments: fights at funerals, the feeble fakery of sports-talk when you ceased to give a fuck when you were like ten years old but it's still like a tax to be payed. Bar fights. Outside-bar fights. No-reason anytime fights. And the turn to compulsive or self-destructive or self-hating behaviours of all sorts, of which addictions are just a subset.


I think Welsh does a great job with all of that. And I have more appreciation now for the withdrawal and counseling and depression and pulling it together and fucking it up again stuff, which seemed so irrelevant then, amid the bravado of youth, but which, it turns out, is just gonna insinuate itself into your life eventually, in some form, and you have to somehow find the resources to deal. That's the hidden existential statement of Trainspotting as far as I'm concerned: "His friends will vanish as his need increases. The inverse, or perverse, mathematics of life." And the drugs are just a for instance, a test case.


And like, one last thing: it's not mathematics: it's economics. Growing up, like, a judge's kid, and getting addicted to heroin and pregnant and alienating your family and going to jail for petty crimes, and you're still about a billion times better off than someone who's in that situation but didn't start with your support network. My life doesn't have a lot to do with drugs these days (and lest this review gave you the wrong impression, never really did); nor a lot with old ugly thuggish E-town, which has gentrified, and was never, don't let me give you the wrong impression again, Leith. But I still feel the repercussions. Me and my boys have remained close, and have prospered, and the two are bound up together. The harder life is, the more good people are ground down into schemies and exploiters. We were lucky to be in Canada, in what was only really an approximation of a depressed working-class inner suburb. And yet I still know more guys in jail, or on welfare, or with kids themselves approaching reproductive age, or grinding their lives away in shit jobs, than all the people I go to grad school with put together.


Sick of talking about me. Point is: it's hard to be poor, and you mortgage yourself to pretend you're not, and to have the easy joys and choices that people with just a BIT more security take for granted, throw away chances defiantly to show that you don't need a fat society's charity, and it all perpetuates unto the generations. Welsh gets that psychic colonization perfectly, and nails it in this book. I'm realizing, now, how I went about my graduate education in a really stupid way because I never thought a professorship was a reliable enough option for me, and now it seems like it might have been had I understood how well I was gonna do--and here I am, another victim (excuse the melodrama; I'm trying to make a larger social point rather than asking for pity) of the tyranny of lowered expectations. As Sick Boy observes of Second Prize and football, the drugs that are the ostensible theme in this book are really just a distraction from that core of despair, that's a lot harder to escape from than just moving away and choosing life.

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After reading Trainspotting I had to ask myself what else I've been missing. The main characters are addicts, junkies, heavy drinkers and a sicko or two, with heroin as the star here. It's an alien culture to me, but I just couldn’t put the book down, dialect and all. I also have no clue about

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this subculture of underclass in 1980s Scotland, but Welsh writes it as if he’s been there and followed this group of people around. I won’t go into the plot here (there are lots of places you can find info on this book), but at times I was horrified to find myself actually laughing in the midst of what seemed several pointless and hopeless situations – in appreciation of some scenes of incredibly black humor. At the same time, I found myself getting into the characters emotionally, seeing them as people who are disenfranchised on many levels. Welsh does a superb job of capturing the anger, boredom and disconnection of his characters (who come off as being very real) showing both the positives & negatives of friendship & other emotional connections in a series of small, connected vignettes, told in chronological order.

Very well written; I highly recommend it. If you get stuck while reading it, there’s a glossary in the back; I found myself at least at first trying the dialect orally and after a while it wasn’t even noticeable and the book flowed. Readers of Palahniuk or other writers who have the ability to capture the rage of a generation might enjoy this one, but this book is definitely not for everyone.

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Brilliant vignettes from varying members of a loose association of heroin addicts, mostly, in 1980's Scotland. Makes me want to tap up a vein and then knock my own teeth out for entertaining the thought. De-fucking-pravity interspersed with poignant social and philosophical commentary and

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delightful black humor. Yes, please.

(Had to read the first chapter aloud before my brain synced with the dialect)

Dr Forbes: You spent time with prostitutes?

Me: Aye.

Dr Forbes: Was this because you lacked confidence in your ability to form social and sexual attachments with women at the University?

Me: Naw, ah wis only interested in sex, rather than a relationship. Ah didnae really huv the motivation tae disguise that fact. Ah saw these women purely as a means ay satisfying ma sexual urges. Ah decided it wis mair honest tae go tae a prostitute instead, rather than play a game ay deception. Ah wis quite a moral fucker in these days. So ah blew ma grant money oan prostitutes, and nicked food and books. That's what started the thievin. It wisnae really the junk, though that obviously didnae help.

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I imagine when people hear the title of this book, they immediately think something scene. As if it's the story of a bunch of junkies in Scotland. The thing is about Welsh is that the culture of the people who live on these streets is really a grand metaphor for all kinds of political criticisms

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and systems. It has to do with the relationship of the Scottish to their own gov't as well as their relationship with Ireland and England. At the same time, these points may be easy to miss when mired with the dialect. There is a helpful glossary at the back for those who feel especially clueless. After awhile, you learn to accommodate and may even find a couple of Scottish sounding words slipping from between your own lips if you've been reading it for long enough. (I swear my own thoughts started sounding Scottish.)

To me, what's shameful is how people think the film is so great...compared to the novel, the film is really Trainspotting light..and it's the reason why it's passed off so easily as just a book about druggies. It misses several key scenes and characters which are conveniently dropped in favor of more mainstream appeal. In comparison, it raises less questions and is a weak version of the storytelling. (I thought Danny Boyle did a much better job of Shallow Grave personally.)

This book deserves to be treated not as simply an icon of pop culture but with the deftness of a surgeon using a scalpel, carefully dissecting each hidden meaning and character. Without that, it will be lost forever in a category it neither belongs in nor deserves.

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I've been wanting to read Trainspotting for years and I finally did it! It wasn't easy at first, the Scottish and junkie slang was slowing me down a lot, but you do get use to it. The book is about junkies and friends of junkies in Scotland. The shot story structure takes awhile to get use to as

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well. Yes the stories mostly focus on the main group, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie, and its mostly about their need for heroin or their life in Scotland, but the stories jump around and your don't get a full scope of what happened between them. While it annoyed me a lot at first because it felt like what the fuck is going on and whats the point of the book when it didn't feel like there was much development, just random things going on. The more you get into the book though, it feels like each chapter is more of a snapshot of the dynamics of junkies and their friends and the final chapter really drives the point home of drugs > friends and maybe its where you live and who you are friends with that caused it to be drugs > friends.

*Edit 03/11/2014: After watching the movie I feel maybe I misread the ending? I thought for sure after reading the book Renton was stealing the money not only to get away from his friends but to buy drugs with it, he was using again at the time and even though he was hopeful about starting a new life it felt like most of that money was going to be spent on heroin still. In the movie though it pretty much concluded Renton is getting his life together and joining the regular people of life. Either way both the movie and book are great and I feel they compliment each other well rather than one being better than the other.

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I cannot tell you how much I loved this book. I read it when I was young and impressionable and before it was a big hit and it blew me away. Don't know how I would feel now but for what it did when I first read it I'm giving it a 4.

The story is written in vignettes, each being a situation of one of the members of a group of friends. Some are written in first person and some in third. I’d never want to be around these people in real life because, the way the book is written, anyone outside of their group is fair game for

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taunting and much, much worse. These are Scottish street guys -- criminals who knife people, steal money, commit robberies, do many kinds of hard drugs, drink themselves into oblivion, and have sex in their occasional lucid times of not having too much too drink.

The writing is good in that it uses the local vernacular, which is made easier to understand with the help of a glossary--easily found and printed out from the internet. It is also a very colorful read which uses the guys’ base street talk and incorporates some really, really funny lines (“Dianne took the opportunity, and rode herself into a climax, Renton lying there like a dildo on a large skateboard”). I had to laugh out loud at quite a few of them. So as not to frighten myself, I think of this book as a look at another culture. From an anthropological standpoint, this is a great read! :-) I’ll be looking for more writing by this author.

I didn’t realize that this story was headed in any particular direction. It seemed just as shattered and disheveled as the lives of the characters of the novel. I realized, in the end, it was the story of the direction in which Mark Renton was headed all along.

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Short story collection about the escapades of Leith/Edinburgh junkies/jakies Mark "Rent Boy" Renton, Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson, Daniel "Spud" Murphy, Francis "Franco" Begbie, Davie Mitchell, and Tommy Laurence. Although the majority of the stories are told from Rents' point of view, all

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characters have at least one story of their own and Welsh's unerring ability to give them distinctive voices is nothing short of brilliant - after only a few lines, it's obvious who is the "hero" of which story, no matter that they are not explicitly identified in the text.

Be prepared for a rather unlikeable group of people, with not only questionable but downright absent morals. The stories don't follow a linear pattern, but they do contribute to the breakdown in friendships, which will lead to the final story's betrayal (although that one does contain a nugget of moral redemption). There is quite a lot of crude language (what else would you expect from this crowd?!), but it's still highly recommended to absolutely everyone - the voices are spot on for these characters and their stories are ones that might not be pleasant to read, but they are so firmly placed in reality that any student of the human experience should be aware of them.

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Unlike the other Irvine Welsh books I've read (or tried to read), I couldn't put this down. It's one of my favourites.

The ups and downs of a group of Edinburgh drug addicts , a classic of our day

was little apprehensive when I started to read Trainspotting because before beginning it all I had heard about the book was that no one could get through it because the Scottish dialect the book is written in made it completely unintelligible for most.

However, after maybe two or three pages, I was

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flying through the Scottish slang. Maybe it's because I grew up in the Cajun south, one of the few places where one can still encounter a true dialect from time to time, but dialect in books just doesn't phase me. I flew through A Clockwork Orange, and I barely blink when I encounter passages written in dialects in other novels, so what is for many Trainspotting's major downfall didn't phase me one bit.

Having said that, I'm still not saying that Trainspotting lives up to its own hype. Its billed as this amazing novel that "deserves to sell more copies than the Bible," but I just don't see it. There are some moving moments and the book is by no means bad or unenjoyable, but it's not stunning either. It's another interesting escape into a world full of drugs I'll never experience firsthand, but not, for me at least, much more than that.

My recommendation, if dialect doesn't phase you, pick it up and give it read, but if dialect is something you have to struggle through, it's okay to pass this one by.

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It was a little hard for me to get into the swing of this book, because it's written entirely in a dialect that's almost as impossible to understand when spoken. That being said, once I got the hang of it, I could not put the book down any more than I could look away from the movie. Some parts are

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terrible, some funny, and, as someone else has stated, often times it is both.

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[ purchased ]
personally? found the resolution disappointing. there's some lyrical prose a nicely disguised plot interspersed among comedy & addiction.
[ used a hollowed-out " bad blood " as a speech presentation ]

Fan-fucking-tastic. This book was incredible, very bizarre, but great. The movie of the same title is based on it and that also is good. I read this for work, but loved it anyway. I’m glad I read it for work, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have. Written in dialect with no quotation marks,

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stylistically very interesting. About a bunch of junkies running around Scotland trying to live.

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I LOVE everything about Trainspotting. I love the language, though it may be confusing at first, once you get the hang of it its beautiful. I love every character (especially Sick Boy and Spud, they're hilarious). The story has gritty realism and fantasy at the same time. It's moving, compelling,

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disturbing and one of my favorites.

The film is also great; Danny Boyle gives Trainspotting the respect it deserves.

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A book I need toread again soon. Has you using the Scottish vernicular with a clever Prose and an excellent story to boot.

Great book. No moralism, but great tragedy and hilarious fun, often served simultaneously.

The posters advertising the film were all over the London Underground when I was working there nearly 20 years ago. Though I never saw the film, I approached the book with some trepidation many years later, those images still in my mind. I expected something bleak, tough to read, a bit depressing.

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I was wrong - this is laugh-out-loud funny, and once you get your head around its fragmented structure, and the shifting narrative voice, it's a gripping tale, fundamentally following one man's attempts to get off hard drugs.

There were many many dark sections - the haunting visions experienced by the main character when he goes 'cold turkey' for example, but these are set against some superb humour (the Neil Diamond medley comes to mind straight away). The book is written entirely in Scottish dialect, which can be a bit difficult to follow, but puts a Scottish accent in your head right away. It also boasts perhaps the highest c-word count of any book I have read to date.

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The book takes a while to really get into because of the Scottish accent used at first. One of the harder books I've tried to read but still one of the fastest finishes because I could not put it down.
Renton and crew evoke zero sympathy and do not fit the morale codes of society in anyway but you

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still want to continue reading to see how it all comes out. Welsh rights a bunch of little stories and turns it into a full novel with a few odds and ends that explain what the underground drug scene was like in the 80's for Edinburgh.

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Not for the squemish

Once you get to the point where you can "hear" the dialog in your head, it gets a lot easier to understand this book. I loved it almost in spite of myself.

I can't stay I really enjoyed reading Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" but I am certainly glad that I took the time to read it. The book follows a group of Scottish slackers who are addicted to heroin, alcohol, stealing and general mayhem. They are poor, have little to do and are escaping from their

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circumstances in the few ways available to them -- drugs, women and crime.

Marvelously written in a Scottish dialect, it took me a few pages to really get into the flow of the story. (I was perhaps helped because I saw the movie many moons ago and had a general idea of the plot.) The story is not told in a linear fashion, but short sketches and stories told by a variety of characters.

Overall, I found the novel to be a fascinating look at a subculture -- the drug scene of 1980's Scotland -- and disaffected youth who have lost their hopes and their way.

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I loved this book. The language is fun to read and despite the sad and pathetic lives that the drugs have driven these people into, the players make some very insightful and introspective thoughts.