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Trainspotting

4.01 of 5 stars 4.01 · rating details · 55,748 ratings · 1,032 reviews

Irvine Welsh's controversial first novel, set on the heroin-addicted fringe of working-class youth in Edinburgh, is yet another exploration of the dark side of Scottishness. The main character, Mark Renton, is at the center of a clique of nihilistic slacker junkies with no hopes and no possibilities, and only "mind-numbing and spirit-crushing" alternatives in the straight...more

Paperback, 344 pages

Published 1994 (first published 1993)

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Nov 14, 2010 Tatiana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who are not easily scared off by junkies, profanity, and Scottish dialect.

Shelves: 2010, favorites, contemporary, only-i-will-like, b

As seen on The Readventurer

This is why I love reading challenges - they allow me to discover books I would have never picked up on my own. Let's face it, would I ever intentionally seek a book about Scottish low-lives - junkies, thugs, and prostitutes? Don't think so. But alas, the fate threw Welsh's "Trainspotting" my way and I ate it up like hot cakes.

"Trainspotting" is a collection of short stories narrating scenes in the lives of a Skag Boys (skag = heroin) - Rents, Sick Boy, Begsbie, Spud,...more As seen on The Readventurer

This is why I love reading challenges - they allow me to discover books I would have never picked up on my own. Let's face it, would I ever intentionally seek a book about Scottish low-lives - junkies, thugs, and prostitutes? Don't think so. But alas, the fate threw Welsh's "Trainspotting" my way and I ate it up like hot cakes.

"Trainspotting" is a collection of short stories narrating scenes in the lives of a Skag Boys (skag = heroin) - Rents, Sick Boy, Begsbie, Spud, and various people around them - their families, lovers, drug suppliers, partners in crime, or victims. Mark Renton (Rents) is more or less is the protagonist, this is mostly his story, even though the stories are written from multiple points of view in 1st and 3rd person. The majority of them is also narrated in Scottish dialect, so some initial effort to understand is required.

The best thing about this book is that it takes you on a roller-coaster ride - it takes you from revulsion to uncontrollable boasts of laughter to tears of compassion. Considering that every other word in this book is a profanity, I think Irvine Welsh has talent.

"Trainspotting" starts off as a rather repulsive read - within the first 10 pages Rents is fishing out the drugs that he has just rectally ingested out of the filthy overflowing public toilet. The repulsive factor doesn't really go away as the story progresses, we are faced with psychopath Begsbie who is extremely abusive to everyone around him, including his girlfriends, or Sick Boy who is very popular with women and at some point becomes a pimp of a few of them, or Rents himself, who drunkenly has sex with a 14-year old girl or shags his dead brother's pregnant fiance in the bathroom during his funeral. The list goes on and on. But the thing is, in spite of all these depravities, Skag Boys are strangely relatable and, dare I say it, often likable. They are losers and addicts and criminals, but their emotional and moral struggles are real.

The book is, although very dark, at the same time hilarious, it is filled with Rents' sarcastic humor. This quote from the scene can give you a good taste of the writing.

Here Rents is held by his parents under the house arrest. They are attempting to get him off the heroin, Rents' mom is trying to feed him.

"The auld girl sticks us in the comfy chair by the fire in front ay the telly, and puts a tray oan ma lap. Ah'm convulsing inside anyway, but the mince looks revolting.
- Ah've telt ye ah dinnae eat meat Ma, ah sais.
- Ye eywis liked yer mince and tatties (potatoes). That's whair ye've gone wrong son, no eating the right thing. Ye need meat.
Now there is apparently a casual link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism."

In the latter part "Trainspotting" is no longer a repulsively hilarious read, it gets darker and darker, as we follow the fates of Rents' many friends, and it's not pretty - too many of them are dying - from HIV from sharing needles, from cancer, gangrene, heart attacks. Seeing this many deaths, 25-year old Rents attempts to kick his habit over and over again, but will he and his friends succeed?

I think "Trainspotting" is a remarkable read and I will definitely read more of Welsh's work. But is this book for everybody? Absolutely not. It is filled with human depravities, profanity, and written in Scottish dialect. This will turn off many readers. But if you are looking for a challenging (in many ways) read, give "Trainspotting" a try. You won't be disappointed.

Reading challenge: #13 - transgressive(less)

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Mar 06, 2013 Stacia ~ Mistress of Mediocrity rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult

I'm a little confused about why I'd had the other edition reviewed, when I didn't read the John Hodge after-movie version. *delete, delete, delete*

If I hadn't seen the movie first, I probably wouldn't have even tried reading the book because the language difference is not the most accommodating to read in print. The writing works for the people, place, and lifestyle that's being shown, but it's definitely easier to understand when you have the movie to refer to in your mind. I will say that afte...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Jafar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fuck me insensible. Oh ya cunt, ya! Ah dinnae watch the movie, bit ma heid’s spinnin fae readin this shite, ah kin fuckin tell ye. The book’s no novel – mair a collection ay short stories, likesay, aboot a bunch ay Scot junkies. The cunts go aroond, fartin n shitein n shootin smack. The book is written in the Scottish dialect, sortay like whit ah’m tryin tae imitate, ken whit ah mean? It wisnnae easy fe us tae git intae it. It made us scoobied aboot whit the cunts were sayin, likesay, bit after...more

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Sep 07, 2012 Emily May rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, contemporary

I must have read the first page of Trainspotting more than twenty times since purchasing the book years ago, and each time I would put it back in fear of all the Scottish dialect. There's no point lying, this is a challenging novel, sometimes you have to read things twice or pause to think about them to fully understand what's being said. But, unlike a lot of books that are difficult to read, this was ultimately rewarding and once you get used to the slang words it becomes a very gritty, moving...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Rowena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, scottish-lit

I actually quite enjoyed this book though some parts of it were really hard to take. There's a lot of vulgarity, sex and violence, but the book also talks about some important issues, such as Scottish nationalism, HIV/AIDS, drug use (there's a LOT of drug use), racism in the UK and the problems in Northern Ireland.

The characters are quite colourful and interesting, I think they are well-developed.The book was quite philosophical and witty at times, though mainly from a misanthropic viewpoint!

Th...more

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Aug 29, 2007 Smokinjbc rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Irvine Welsh fans

Shelves: trainspotters

Those that know me are aware that I've never seriously (and can count on two fingers how often) done any serious drugs- the worse I 've tried was weed and it did absolutely nothing for me except make me feel like I was choking to death. So.. why the attraction of Irvine Welsh's lovely books? They are anything but lovely, more like a trip down into the sewer but they are still, to my ears anyways, gorgeous in the dialogue, characterizations and most of all, the original, frantic storylines. Who...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Ellie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, physical-books, reviewed, 1000-bymrbyd-list, bbc-big-read-list, contemporary

It took a while to get past the Scottish slang terms and dialect. I had to re-read some paragraphs over and over again to understand what was being said. But once you get used to it, the novel is an extremely interesting and compelling read. It is a realistic and hard-hitting story of drug addiction. The novel takes the reader into the minds and emotions of the characters, all who at one point or another, act as narrator. This technique allows for incredibly deep character insight and the read g...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Mei-Lu rated it 4 of 5 stars

In his appearance on In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, philosopher and writer Roger Scruton, author of An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, sniffed at Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting: "It's so badly written that I would call it an unsuccessful attempt to elevate to the level of high culture... If you compare his 'scotified' dialogue with Sir Walter himself you would see how badly written it is." In 1993, Trainspotting was longlisted for the Booker Prize. But, according to Wikipedia, it was...more In his appearance on In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, philosopher and writer Roger Scruton, author of An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, sniffed at Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting: "It's so badly written that I would call it an unsuccessful attempt to elevate to the level of high culture... If you compare his 'scotified' dialogue with Sir Walter himself you would see how badly written it is." In 1993, Trainspotting was longlisted for the Booker Prize. But, according to Wikipedia, it was rejected from the shortlist for "offending the sensibilities of two judges". (The eventual winner was Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha-Ha, which I have not read.)

Whether Roger Scruton and those two Booker judges like it or not, twenty years on Trainspotting is going strong, still in print (what do you want to bet that Roger Scruton's book is still in print?) And I think it deserves its accolades and success. In fact, I disagree with Roger Scruton completely because I think it is a *very* well-written book. Irvine Welsh captures the speech and culture of a very specific time and place, of a very specific group of people, in such a vivid manner that the reader is completely drawn into it. One does not have to be a 90s Scottish junkie to identify with the characters or the situations they find themselves in. I can understand why establishment figures like Roger Scruton and those two Booker judges would find this book disagreeable because it essentially reveals all the ways in which the government and society has failed this group of young people. And it doesn't criticize existing social systems in the safe, comfortable, moralizing way that Charles Dickens would. We are not invited to pity the poor characters. Instead, we are made to feel we are one of them, to understand why they make the choices they make, even if we don't necessarily agree with them. While we are laughing and feeling the exhilaration at some of the madcap antics of Renton and his crew, we are acutely aware of the fact that, had their circumstances been slightly different, these young men would have been indulging their high spirits in less self-destructive ways, that they could each of them have a better life but they are trapped by their environment, by habit, and by a lack of opportunity so their youthful energy and creativity is poured into criminal behavior rather than more constructive pursuits.

I feel as though I could easily write an entire essay on this book but since this is a pocket review, I'm just going to say that this is a really good book, well worth reading. It's smart, funny, entertaining and thought-provoking.(less)

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Jan 09, 2008 Kirstie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people interested in politics just as much as the human condition.

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 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 wi...more

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Nov 16, 2009 Matt Algiers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern

I love this novel. I've read it three times, and I never re-read books. What surprised me at the first reading of this book was how disjointed it was when compared to the movie. Only a fraction of the chapters are represented in the film version, and several characters are missing completely. I learned that each chapter was actually a short story and Trainspotting itself was merely a collection. However,I found that the book characters were much more engaging and human. It seemed that each one...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Laurent rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-books, book-club-books, favorites

An amazing book - brutal and shocking, mixed with grim-humour

Ok, so I started off by disliking this book, but as always, since it was a book-club book I figured I'd stick with it. There was no issue with the story itself; it is engaging, funny and grim all in one. It was just the author's choice to write in raw Scottish accent, which takes quite a while to get your head around and certainly detracts from the readability initially. Having said this, I think this also makes the book extremely uniq...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites

An amazing novel. The crushing weight of these characters and their lives is so monumental. I usually have a hard time with books that focus so much on the ugliness of humanity and the lengths we can go to to punish and destroy ourselves and others, but Welsh is so adept at creating the internal reflections of all these various people that I find myself utterly transfixed by them.
Everyone in this book is an absolute monster (except for Spud), but they're not easily categorized as one-dimensiona...more

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May 14, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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 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 inf...more

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Aug 05, 2007 Jason.frisbie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think one of my favorite parts about this book was the absorbing style of the difficult Scottish dialects. Welsh is doing the same thing for Edinburgh that Twain did for the deep south- establishing worthwhile and nearly tangible characters. Those well written voices are fairly haunting because they are very particular in their styles: Spud says "cat-boy," whereas Sickboy says "cunt." It's stunning how well I got to know these characters and their expinations of their incredible and tragic exp...more

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Jul 13, 2010 Stephanie (Stepping out of the Page) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, really-good, read-in-2010, series-or-companions, realistic-fiction, movies-or-tv, adult-fiction, 1001-books

A very good read. I found the book surprisingly easy to get into and understand despite the use of dialect and I found that it really added to the impact and effect of the book. This read more like a collection of short stories rather than a novel but I found that it worked very well. The graphic and explicit nature of the book really made an impact and the contents allowed me to think deeper into some of the issues raised concerning drugs and the culture surrounding them. The book was shocking...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Janice rated it 5 of 5 stars

I recently read this, one of my top all-time books, again. And I say everyone else should read it too (unless you have a weak-stomach when it comes to images of hard drug use and unpleasant bodily functions). As soon as you get used to the he Scottish slang and phonetic-spelling, you'll realize it's one of the most amazing books ever in terms of idiomatic language and dialogue. Gen-Xers may also relate to the theme of disaffection --there's the "choose life" speech made famous by the movie. ( Th...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Mnava rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Se avete amato il film non potrete non amare il libro. Il primo del resto ne è una trasposizione abbastanza fedele. Se non avete visto il film, aspettatevi di schiantarvi contro un muro di filosofia "da strada" in grado di infrangere ogni vostro pregiudizio o credenza su tutto quello che circonda questo mondo. Quale mondo? Quello della Scozia abbandonata e dimenticata di giovani che crescono senza troppe prospettive o aspettetive per il futuro...sì, ma non solo. Quella della droga, dell'alcol e...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Joey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

ah, Trainspotting! innumerevoli le volte che mi ha emozionato, divertito, scosso; inquantificabile il mio amore nei suoi confronti (peccato stessi parlando del film).
Ebbene sì, uno dei pochi libri che ho letto dopo averne già visto (e credetemi, più di una volta!)la trasposizione cinematografica.
Impossibile leggere delle "avventure", gli eccessi, gli sfasci e le follie giovanili ai limiti dell'inverosimile della compagnia di Rents, Bagbie, SickBoy & co, senza associarne i volti a quelli deg...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Travis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this book. My friend lent me this book to read months ago, because it isn't easy to come by English books here. He swore by it, and he told me I needed to watch youtube videos of Scots speaking in order to understand the written dialect. I read a couple pages and it was too hard to get into it because of the dialect. So I stopped reading it.
Years ago I saw the movie and I loved the movie. I thought it was incredible and beautiful. I heard it was based on a book, but I figured the book...more I loved this book. My friend lent me this book to read months ago, because it isn't easy to come by English books here. He swore by it, and he told me I needed to watch youtube videos of Scots speaking in order to understand the written dialect. I read a couple pages and it was too hard to get into it because of the dialect. So I stopped reading it.
Years ago I saw the movie and I loved the movie. I thought it was incredible and beautiful. I heard it was based on a book, but I figured the book would be too much a glorification of drug use, so I never read it. Some of my friends began recommending Irvine Welsh to me, but I figured he was just a writer for druggies.
A couple months ago, when I picked up this book again, I read past the first 20 pages and I could understand the dialect. And I couldn't put the book down. It doesn't glorify drugs at all, it presents them for what they are, and it ties in socioeconomic conditions which foster drug addictions. The book has very funny parts and very grim realistic parts. While I was reading the book I was reflecting back on the movie, and disappointed by my memories of the movie, because as I remembered the movie, it didn't go into the territory that the book did.
The biggest critique I have of this book is there is a chapter towards the very end of the book, and this chapter is actually a long one, almost 30 pages, I think, and the voice in this chapter doesn't match the tone of the whole book (because each chapter is written in the first person from one of the persons involved in their society.) This chapter just didn't fit in the book. The theme of this chapter was vengeance and hate. While I was reading it I was struck by it, thinking it was horrible writing, like a high school or college creative writing piece. During that chapter, I actually put the book down and it took me a while to finish that chapter. When I read the next chapters I figured that perhaps the writing of the other chapter wasn't awful, but it was out of place with the rest of the novel, which is a couple hundred pages long, so I imagine I was thrown off.(less)

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Dec 09, 2012 Camilla rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.3 stars if I can do that... :)

A really gut-wrenching story and that speaks to the author's abilities that he made everything so real and emotional.
However, while I appreciate the attempt to make the story as life-like as possible with the Scottish vernacular, that is the main reason this book is not a 4 or even 5 for me.
I had to read this whole book "out loud" to myself in my head - which meant it took twice as long as normal and there were places where I didn't entirely understand every word....more

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Sep 25, 2012 Kevin Tole rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: britlit, contemporary-novels, scottish

What distinguishes this, his first decent book, from the rest of Irvine Welsh's oeuvre is that the characters are finely observed and not mere ciphers as most of the characters in his other books have become. The other main thing that distinguishes Trainspotting (apart from its massive success, that is) is that it contains a sense of pathos, concern and sentiment. It not so much sparked a change in Scottish literature, but it opened a new door. In fact it opened a whole wide door to the ex-junki...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Sean McLachlan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

This book has been talked about so much that I'm not going to do a standard review. Instead I'm going to write about my reaction to it as a writer.

Like many great books, Trainspotting succeeds partially because it breaks so many conventions yet still manages to keep you turning the pages. There's a common consensus among contemporary writers that you shouldn't write in heavy dialect. This, they say, slows the reader down and risks disengaging them from the text. The first few pages of Trainspott...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Punit Soni rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporay

The sweat was lashing ofay sickboy. He wis trembling. When a book starts of in this part-gibberish-part-scottish pure conversational tone, you know you are in for a tough read. Because I am not scottish and maybe I am too prudish, I had a hard time comprehending what was going on in the initial chapters and when I did comprehend, I was flinching with revulsion. And then slowly, the language became easier to understand. Shite became the new buzzword and cunt became a reference to every man, woman...more

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Apr 29, 2012 David Ayres rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Dubliners of Edinburgh's drug scene...well that what it felt like I was reading anyway. Like Dubliners it is a collective of snapshots, but Trainspotting concentrates on the lives of a group of errr friends (for the lack of a better word) and their lives embroiled in the cities drug scene. It makes for uncomfortable reading. The dialect is difficult to get into form the outset, and Welsh has forsaken speech marks for dashes and indentations. The stories are only loosely connected (more throu...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Lfp rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you came to 'Trainspotting' by Irvine Welsh by way of Danny Boyle's film adaptation, you are likely to find the novel somewhat of a departure. The drugs, humor, and many of the basic vignettes are all there, but added is Welsh's keen eye for the social problems affecting the decaying Scottish slums of the 1980s. Welsh's novel isn't really about the drugs, pubs, and sport that fill his characters' time; rather, it is about the climate that produces that behavior.

Influenced by experimental nove...more If you came to 'Trainspotting' by Irvine Welsh by way of Danny Boyle's film adaptation, you are likely to find the novel somewhat of a departure. The drugs, humor, and many of the basic vignettes are all there, but added is Welsh's keen eye for the social problems affecting the decaying Scottish slums of the 1980s. Welsh's novel isn't really about the drugs, pubs, and sport that fill his characters' time; rather, it is about the climate that produces that behavior.

Influenced by experimental novelists, like Alastair Grey (Welsh cites '1982, Janine' as a source), the narrative is written in phonetic brogue that is as dense to read as it is to hear. Difficult in places, and downright unintelligible in others (a helpful glossary of terms is added to the end of most American editions), the writing style nevertheless draws the reader into the story in a way that a more conventional style could not. In fact, when Welsh changes to a third person narrative for a god-like perspective chapter, the result is almost alienating.

Welsh manipulates point-of-view throughout the novel for effect. The story centers around Mark 'Rent Boy' Renton and his posse of friends and pseudo-friends living in Leith, Edinburgh in the mid 1980s. Many chapters are first-person accounts given by these characters of their heroin addiction and repeated attempts to rehab. However, several chapters are dedicated to first-person accounts given by minor characters, only briefly introduced. Welsh leaves it up to the reader, and subtle changes in narrative style to distinguish between the shifting POVs. Occasionally, the narrative switches to a third person voice that gives a more general social critique of the decaying Edinburg of the time.

Welsh deals with his subject with a deft hand. His comments are subtle and yet meaningful. They hit hard. His characters are both victims of, and willing participants in their own squalor. When given the opportunity to escape, they more often than not choose the familiar rut.(less)

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May 08, 2011 Mcvane rated it 3 of 5 stars

I won't do a summary as it's already up there so I'll focus on my reaction.

Reading this was like listening to-- no, sitting next to a small crowd of royally plastered neds talking non-stop, at top speed and volume, on a Saturday-night train cracking from Glasgow to Edinburgh. Thankfully, there's a Scots-English glossary in the back of the book, but unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I reached the end. Luckily, author Irvine Welsh made it so consistent that it'll eventually become reada...more I won't do a summary as it's already up there so I'll focus on my reaction.

Reading this was like listening to-- no, sitting next to a small crowd of royally plastered neds talking non-stop, at top speed and volume, on a Saturday-night train cracking from Glasgow to Edinburgh. Thankfully, there's a Scots-English glossary in the back of the book, but unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I reached the end. Luckily, author Irvine Welsh made it so consistent that it'll eventually become readable.

Trainspotting has memorable - and oft, darkly funny - moments, but not enough for me to tolerate its tone and tired old messages in almost all these vignettes. It's the kind I can find in rants our uncle makes whenever he thinks Scotland is going to the dogs (hadn't it been there a couple of times?).

Basically, Trainspotting is repeating almost everything said last few decades. Only this time, it's wrapped itself with all sorts - events designed to rip eyeballs out of readers' eye sockets, streak of dark and morbid humour, relentless swearing, scenes involving drugs, certain self-analysing and philosophical musings that go nowhere, and of course The Attitude - to present itself as something entire new. But in the end, it's still the same old song.

You can kick the underdog as many as you like, you'll never be able to kill the essence of it; no matter how much you think it deserves to die. As for the underdog that keeps trying to hang itself with a figurative noose? That's the question. Like I say, same old song.

In spite of all that, it's easy to see why so many readers liked this book. Not only characters are pretty much forces of life, Trainspotting doesn't flinch from looking at Scotland's flaws and weaknesses. rewards readers for working hard to make sense of written Scots. It helps that author Irvine Welsh has a great ear for language. At times, he made it seem so poetic.

Even so, Trainspotting reminds me too much my uncle who, whenever he's "feeling emotional", talks non-stop - and sometimes with a streak of dark humour ("They may some day carry my rock-cold corpse down to the stone, but they'll never carry this cock of Scotland, I'll be telling ya") - about this country until Aunt gives him a good slap on his head to shut him up.

I still don't know if I liked this book or not. For now, it's fifty-fifty.
(less)

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Sep 28, 2010 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel tells the story of a group of junkies living on the edge in Edinburgh. It starts out spreading the story between several key characters - Rents, Sick Boy, and Spud, amongst others. It quickly becomes clear that the story is really that of Mark Renton, or Rents as he is known to his friends. We follow him over a period of several months where he splits his time between Edinburgh and London, sometimes clean, sometimes not, and it seems, always scheming.

I really enjoyed this novel, but...more

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May 05, 2010 FiveBooks added it

Shelves: fivebooks-on-drug-addiction

Social psychologist Shazia Omar has chosen to discuss Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh on FiveBooks as one of the top five on her subject - Drug Addiction, saying that:

"...People who aren’t in the circle of heroin or other drugs don’t necessarily know much about them, which is perhaps why the film and the book had such a cult following. The characters are working-class anti-heroes, sociopaths. There are no holds barred and parts of the book are grotesque. It’s not an easy book to get through. But...more

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Dec 01, 2009 Josh rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel (more a collection of episodic, linked stories) has tremendous and really infectious verbal energy. The rhythms of the speech of working-class, punk-junky Edinburgh (which the book vividly, and as far as I know, faithfully reproduces with just enough orthographical distortion to make the text comprehensible, but still strange) stay in the mind long after the book is shut. But the book is also an exercise in a certain kind of monotony: all the "colorful" language of the text reduces th...more

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Nov 05, 2009 Alexei rated it 1 of 5 stars

Oh, what an atrocity against literature! And by the way "Trainspotting" is almost universally hailed by critics as something fresh, innovative and even "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades". If so, I would like to offer my deepest condolescences to Britons. Happily, this is definitely not true. Of course, the benefit of reading this book in English (excuse me, in Lowland Scots!) is valuable one, but even the possible shortcomings coming from the fact that I read it in...more Oh, what an atrocity against literature! And by the way "Trainspotting" is almost universally hailed by critics as something fresh, innovative and even "the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades". If so, I would like to offer my deepest condolescences to Britons. Happily, this is definitely not true. Of course, the benefit of reading this book in English (excuse me, in Lowland Scots!) is valuable one, but even the possible shortcomings coming from the fact that I read it in Russian translation (and, probably, not very good translation) can't set off the effect of "Trainsotting"'s very humble literary qualities. It is a collection of not very appropriately connected sketches pretending to depict brutal reality of junkie's lives in Ediburgh's suburb Leith. Some of these sketches are titled as junk dilemmas, though they haven't a form of problem offering two solutions or possibilities, and in fact are some muddy conglomeration of banalities and randomly chosen words, which, being put one after another, make no sense at all. They are narrated by different heroes of the story in the kind of stream-of-consciousness technics, and the type of narration reflects the educational, intellectual and emotional features of storyteller. Maybe two or three of these segments can be seen as "not-so-awful" shortstories, but even this is a rarity among the novel's sketches. The problem of "Trainspotting" is not in the offensive language, obscene imagery or suspected sympathy in depiction of morally corrupt characters. The book can possess all these characteristics and be a masterpiece at the same time (Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night" immediately comes to mind). But Welsh's debut is shallow, flat, primitive and completely devoid of any ideas. It has no sense of tragic which can be so perfectly depicted exactly in this social surroundings. Even when we told about deaths and losses of intimate friends there is nothing between the lines that can turn us to feel empathy. Mostly one-dimensional heroes of this widely acclaimed novel sleep, urinate, watch TV, get a shot, drink a booze, start a fight, "fuck some cunt", swindle money... That's all. Ok, they live this animal-like life, they have no thoughts in their stoned heads and all their impulses are dictated strictly by the primitive instincts. But an authour can show this ugly picture in thought-provoking and even emotionally engaging manner, with thoughts in his head. Irvine Welsh can't. Or maybe he just didn't try hard to do it. Out of the Spud's sympathetic naivety and sparse succesfull phrases and mots here and there there is nothing in "Trainspotting" to be impressed with. The book was interesting to read in a sense of being a page-turner, but in general, this is ridiculously poor reading for simple-minded reader. Sad but true.(less)

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About Irvine Welsh

Probably most famous for his gritty depiction of a gang of Scottish Heroin addicts, Trainspotting, Welsh focuses on the darker side of human nature and drug use. All of his novels are set in his native Scotland and filled with anti-heroes, small time crooks and hooligans. Welsh manages, however to imbue these characters with a sad humanity that makes them likable despite their obvious scumbaggerry...more

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Quotes from Trainspotting

“Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?” — 532 people liked it

“We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.” — 136 people liked it

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