'Trainspoting' by Irvine Welsh

Friday 8 March 2013


Spud shitting the bed.
Rents crawling from the shit demon toilet.
A dead baby crawling across the ceiling.
Running down the street to Iggy Pop with the infamous ‘Choose Life’ list.

The book is better than that. 


I think you can judge a writer on their ability to make you laugh at something you shouldn’t, Bret Easton Ellis made me laugh at things I would never even think and Welsh is no different. In fact Welsh has mastered the art through excruciatingly bleak moments to ones that have you caught up in hilarity or fear. He has cut each iconic character in a way that you can’t help but empathise with them (except Begbie). It is the mix of these characters through the guessing linguistics of each chapter that draws you into these feelings, as if each page pulls them from the common junkie pool they all originally blur to into. 



And although I hate comparing novels to their films as they have such different constraints, the novel carries so much more than the film that you cannot pass the chance to read it. It is always the small, people orientated stories that are the best, the little lives that could easily be yours as they are the characters. 


What I also love about Trainspotting is the Scottish dialect, purely because just like when I am reading Iain Banks, if you try to talk to whilst I am reading it, I will probably reply in a Scottish accent.

x

I don't really know what this was, a wee ramble about Trainspotting but neither a real review or a synopsis. Sorry!

Get the book here: Trainspotting 

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