Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
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Book Reviews of Trainspotting
Book Review: great dark, nihilistic book
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished this yesterday. This was a GREAT book. I've finally found a contemporary author whose work I can sink my teeth into. I've felt that most modern authors seem to get one gimmick and run with it. This is why I thought Fight Club was disappointing, and everything I've tried to read by Bret Easton Ellis. But this book, Trainspotting, has some meat - it doesn't try to just get by on the gimmicks of the Scottish accent and heroin addiction. The accent is difficult at first, but I got used to it in a few pages, and besides, there's a glossary in the back. The characters are all junkies or recovering junkies or drunks or just plain screwed up, but in the process of listening to them you get some startling and dead-on insights. You even get a mini-synopsis of Kierkegaard. I'm not kidding - if you're like me and have been so far disappointed by what passes for modern lit, give this book a go, and you won't go away unhappy. One warning, though - this book is pure nihilism. I love that sort of thing, but many do not. There is no rainbow, no higher message, no deeper meaning, no Plan, just the story of people's lives. It skewers everyone and everything, but I think it calls it like it is. It doesn't glorify heroin use, but neither does it propagandize against it. This is just an excellent story, with interesting people saying interesting things, and some great insights into the human condition along the way. I thank the author for writing this. I'll be looking for his other books now.
Book Review: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh: More than the movie.
Summary: 5 Stars
With the film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel set to arrive in American theatres July 19th, and especially given the buzz and controversy the film raised in Britain, expect more than one feature article in newspapers and magazines to take up the obvious and play up the heroin use angle that both the film and book share. See the movie: it's quite good and dares to show people who, despite the detriment clearly shown, enjoy using heroin. See a slice of British life captured effectively in images and music.
Then read the book and see all that fantastic stuff the filmmakers were forced to leave out.
The film of Trainspotting is the story of Mark Renton. The novel takes on each of the films' characters and allows them, in their own words and dialect, to tell their stories. While many of the stories are told with a thick Scots dialect, readers will soon catch the flow of the language and settle in fine (I'd compare it to reading Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha...). From the ultimate revenge a waitress can show, to the harrowing incident in which an AIDS victim draws justice from the person who passed him the virus, this is truly a novel of the Britain the guide books or casual tourist will never see.
It's one of the best books of the ninties to date. And you will want to re-read it with a pen and paper to jot down many of Mark Renton's incredibly on-target observations on life.Book Review: Harshly entertaining.
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd seen the movie, but didn't know if I could bring myself to read the book. I had heard that it was even more graphic than the film, and was unsure of my capabilities to understand the Edinburgh dialect that Welsh had written the book in. However, after a visit to Glasgow, Scotland, I was reintroduced to the novel. I nearly bought it while I was there, but realized that it would not have the glossary that the American edition has. Upon my return, I immediately bought it, and finished it within days. The book is about a group of characters who are all somehow touched by the heroin culture of Edinburgh. Many are users, some are just friends of users. All the characters in the book are somehow linked together. They each tell at least one story through their own eyes. The reader is taken through a journey, shown the ins and outs of these people's addiction, attempts to kick the addiction, and their ultimate failures, either through death, or just through keeping on in their drug use. The characters are vivid and their situations are made quite real for the reader. By the end of the novel I was quite used to the Scottish dialect, and I was rather attached to the characters. I did not want the story to end. Though it is graphic at times, and the dialect is a challenge at the start, I definitely urge everyone to read this harshly entertaining and highly engrossing novel.Book Review: Trainspotting - F***ing brilliant!
Summary: 5 Stars
I love the film, but the book is so much more... It's blacker and it's got a lot more depth. It tells a story about young people's lives in so many different ways apart from the drug abuse angle of Danny Boyle's film. The technique with different people's viewpoints in the different chapters work really well and in my view adds a new dimension to the story. Though a couple of the chapters i Trainspotting read more like short-stories in their own right (e.g. the one about the guy who gets back at the bastard who's responsible for giving him HIV), Welsh still manages to hold the complex web of different impressions and viewpoints together. Since I don't have English as a first language (me being a Swede), I was a bit afraid I wouldn't find the Scottish prose compehensible. But after a short while I got the hang of it and stopped even noticing the awkward spelling. A lot of Swedes will undoubtedly read the book since the film was a big hit over here, and most will only come across the Swedish translation. That is a crying shame because the translation really sucks! If you love Trainspotting as much as I do, check out Irvine Welsh's latest book, Ecstacy. Three short-novels, one burlesque, one very violent and one a love-story. Renton and Spud make cameo appearances as a girl remembers her old days as a punk rocker in a filthy squat in London.Book Review: One of my favorites
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the story of Scottish heroin junkies and their friends. Drugs, HIV/AIDS, drugs, sex, drugs, welfare, drugs and more healthy fun is what you'll find in this exquisite novel.Trainspotting is often compared to A Clockwork Orange... For one thing, they both write in slang (it takes a while to pick up but after a wee bit you'll find yessel typing the same wae, likesay... daft draftpaks) and are both very explicit. Still, they are different. Trainspotting is a little more "real," dealing with the present, while ACO warns us of the future. Trainspotting revolves around a group of characters while ACO is about one protagonist (who is actually an antagonist too, if you're keeping score). In any event, it's safe to say that if you liked one, you'll like the other.
For people who are familiar with the movie but not the book: A few years after I saw the movie for the first time, I decided to read the book... And I must say, the book is much better. If you enjoyed the movie, you will LOVE this. Granted, the book is harder to follow. It's written from different points of view (not just Renton's), and thus includes many scenes/characters not in the film. Don't say "I saw the film, let's move on to something else..." READ THE BOOK!