Read "Glue"

[Keysie]

If you like Trainspotting you might like this, it's about four guys growing up together starting with them being wee ppl right up untill they are in their forties. It shows their lives together and show times when they have been there for each other and stuck together like "glue".
I thought this was a good story with the four main characters all telling parts of the story in their own point of view. And it's not as groggy as his other books such as Trainspotting.

[Charlicat]

I read most of Irvine Welsh's novels and even went to see Filth at the theatre, but I really can't bear them now. Its not that he glamourises drugs as he has been accused of, its that he writes characters, which as a reader you are supposed to get into, that are benefit fraud scum ridden neds, and maybe it is 'the truth' for some people but its not my truth and I don't aspire to be like that so I stopped reading them, they were making me cringe.

[MarkMono]

I find his characters utterly fascinating, in Filth we scour an entire mans soul, through his duality, through his tenderness, through his remorseless violence. I've never aspired to be like any of the characters because, by and large, they are horribly dysfuctional. As much as I personally dislike the tribalism in so many area's of Scotland, I can divorce my personal feelings from my surroundings enough to find them interesting. But that's me, and I could be wrong.

[Drusilla MacBog]

I went to see Filth at the theatre as well and I was rather impressed by it. I tend to get bored rather easily with monologues (which is rather ironic as I tend to write in them) so it was a pleasant surprise to enjoy it.

I do however think Trainspotting is the biggest load of tripe and is one of the few occasions where I prefer the film to the book itself.

Out of the few Welsh books I've read Glue has been the one I've enjoyed the most. Filth was rather good as well but the structure of that pissed me off slightly - the part where his "inner voice" speaks and is basically scrawled all over the book.