Glue
by Irvine Welsh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Irvine WelshEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05
ISBN: 0393322157
Number of pages: 470
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of Glue
Book Review: Sticking together while falling apart
Summary: 5 Stars
In his past works, Scotland's dark son Irvine Welsh explored some of the themes most predominantly found in the most renowned literary works of our time. Friendship, loyalty, drugs, death, despair and redemption- all those who merely thought that all Welsh had to show for himself was a grasp of working-class Scottish brogue and a brutal, severely sick sense of humor (both of which he does have a stranglehold on) are missing the point. His novel "Glue" is his most edified and mature work since "Trainspotting", kicking up dust in the face of critics who blew him off after the muddled narrative of "Marabou Stork Nightmares" or the repetitious crulety of "Filth". Both those books had their disturbing charms, and yet they were missing the vitality, vigor and heart of his earlier work. Well Welsh is back, with a vengeance, and "Glue" is one harrowing, powerful, sucker-punch of a book.
The story spans over three decades, following the misadventures of four best mates- sex-crazy, skirt-chasing layabout "Juice" Terry Lawson, politically conscious, drug-addled DJ Carl "N-Sign" Ewart, focused, intense boxer Billy Birrell and luckless, smacked-out wee Andrew Galloway. We follow their lives from their rough-and-tumble beginnings in the bleak schemes of urban Edinburgh- their earliest days of shagging lassies, starting fights, raving, and hanging around with the wrong crowds. As their lives change, so do the circumstances surrounding them- punk becomes electronica, alcohol become ecstasy, single and loving it becomes married with childen, and the heedless abandon of youth becomes suicide, drug overdoses, and AIDS. All the while, they stick together, even while falling apart, all the while keeping to a strict code of conduct set forth at a very young age by Carl Ewart's dear ol' dad: Never hit a woman, always back up your mates, never let a week go by without investing in new vinyl, never cross a picket line, and never snitch on friend nor foe.
"Glue" is a lengthy book that covers the boy's alternatingly bleak and bleakly funny lives from the schoolyard into suburbia, and for old-school Welsh fans, the humor is black, bitter and very, very funny. There's a lengthy section on the torturing and rape of dogs (!) as well as a very funny set piece involving a misread of the Nazi salute, in addition to countless talks of "gettin yir hole", all spoken in Welsh's inimitatable Scottish dialect. For all its humor, however, "Glue" is also a very sad book and the vivid accounts of one of the main character's hopeless, drug-addled demise and eventual death will stick with one long after the reader is through with its 300-plus pages. Overall, "Glue" is a grown-up book about growing up and the bonds of true friendship, the loyalties that hold it all together, and escape- from your parents, from your surroundings, from the rules that bound you, and from yourself. Welsh has written another masterwork.
Summary of Glue
An epic novel about the bonds of friendship from the author of Trainspotting.
The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century?from punk to techno, from speed to E. Their mutual loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don't hit women, and, most important, never snitch?on anyone. Glue has the Irvine Welsh trademarks?crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor?but it is also a grown-up book about growing up?about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck. "Stocked with his usual quirky, sympathetic characters, this rollicking new tale sparkles with the writer's trademark satiric wit. Its heft and narrative breadth should convince any remaining skeptics that Welsh?now effectively the grand old man of in-your-face Scottish fiction?is a writer to be taken seriously."?Publishers Weekly starred reviewWith a title like Glue, it would seem reasonable to assume that Irvine Welsh's fifth book is a meditation on the pitfalls of solvent abuse. In fact the word refers to the bonds that unite four boys, all of whom have grown up in "the scheme"--i.e., Edinburgh's slum-clearance flats, whose optimistic construction in the 1970s give way to the poverty, unemployment, and crime of the succeeding decades. It is the pervasive despair of these crumbling projects that defines the lives of the protagonists: budding DJ Carl Ewart, boxer Billy Birrell, work-shy, sex-mad Terry Lawson, and Andrew Galloway, a drug addict who has tested HIV-positive.
Recounted in the author's inimitable style, Glue is a grungy, Scots-accented bildungsroman. The novel follows the boys through their early forays into sex, drink, drugs, and football violence. Contemplating his erotic initiation, Carl Ewart poses such crucial questions as "How dae ah chat up a bird?" and "Do I wear a rubber johnny?" Here and there Welsh injects political commentary into the mix: Billy Birrell, for example, reflects that "having money is the only way to get respect. Desperate, but that's the world we live in now." For the most part, though, the author sticks to sex and violence and his famously offhand one-liners: "Guilt and shaggin, they go the gither like fish n chips." Fans of Trainspotting will love the book, even down to the brief appearance of Begbie and Renton. Others may feel that Glue is more of the same, and that, despite its graphic charms, the book finds Welsh stuck in a rut. --Jerry Brotton
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