About this title: An authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic portrait of young addicts in Edinburgh. Rents, Sick Boy, Mother Superior, Swanney, Spuds, and Seeker are as unforgettable a clutch of junkies, rude boys, and psychos as are ever likely to be found in fiction.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Book is in good reading condition. Cover has wear at edges and corners, and may have creases. Spine has wear at edges. read more
Description: Good. 1997-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. 1996-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Acceptable. 1997-Paperback----Used-Acceptable-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780749336509ISBN:0749336501
Description: Good. Cover shows signs of shelfwear and is scuffed. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780749336509ISBN:0749336501
Description: Good. Cover and spine show wear and creasing; FFEP is yellowing. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Norton, New York
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780393314809ISBN:0393314804
Description: Mild corner scuffs, otherwise spine is uncreased, interiors are t ight and clean. Cover contains images from the movie cast. Welsh ' s sardonic, scottish-ridden tale of youth in revolt and revolti ng to boot... read more
"I have to confess that I bought this book "back in the day", before the film adaptation, solely on the strength of the cover, and despite the "difficult" appearance of the writing.
Which is something to address straight off: my edition had no glossary in the back, which I believe subsequent editions did have. I'm more than content with that; I'd have hated to be flicking backwards and forwards during reading, disrupting the flow.
This book certainly flows, the narrative is sharp and fast. I found within 30 or so pages I'd grasped the vernacular and grammar.
I'd forgotten (having watched the film more recently than reading the book) how many well drawn characters there are in here.
The film adaptation (which I regard as one of the better novel adaptations) squashes a few incidents and characters together, which is understandable.
The book is bleak, and not for people who can't tolerate colourful language, but it highlights the nature of human interactions well and describes a life that many people will never experience.
I'd certainly recommend it for anyone who has the ability to put aside conventional novels and tackle the seamier side of life.
It's made me want to go and buy Porno, which I've never read."
"The main difficulty I had with this book is its simulation of the Scottish dialect through the employment of distorted orthography ("tae" for "to," "fae" for "from," etc.) After a while, though, I found myself getting used to the odd spellings. It helped that I had seen the film based on the novel, and so I knew some of the things that would be in the book. However, not everything that is in the book is in the film, most significantly a series of events in which one minor character takes revenge on another minor character. The novel focuses on a group of twenty-something Scottish men, depicting them drinking, discussing football, music and sex, and committing crimes. Some of the men are heroin addicts, and much of the action in the novel emerges from the culture of heroin addiction, including the characters' experiences of injecting themselves, withdrawing, getting money to buy more heroin, and seeing the effects of heroin use on each other. All of the main characters and some minor characters narrate different sections of the book and as one reads their comments, one gets the sense that they do not know why they behave the way they do (although the discussions of topics like psychology, English colonialism and capitalism suggest some reasons). In terms of genre, the novel might best be characterized as an instance of black humor: many of the events in the narrative are comic, but we always seem to see all the characters at their worst."
"I've been putting off reading Trainspotting for years, so when I finally got around to it, I didn't come to the book full of enthusiasm. I trudged through the first third - the stories didn't grab me, the characters didn't come to life. But, gradually, the shifting viewpoints allowed Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and co. to seep into my head.
Not so much a novel as a collection of linked short stories, Trainspotting has a series of narrative voices. Sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, the reader follows a range of characters. As the thrill of drug-taking wears off, the weaknesses of each are exposed. Even the friendship between them - the only good thing in most of their lives - is a sham, based on bullying and need.
There are a few chapters written from the point of view of female characters and these are surprisingly strong. Throughout, Welsh shows an awareness of the issues surrounding his characters. Although he writes to shock, that isn't his only intention - instead, the shock is used as a way to get readers to pay attention to the lives of a group of people who are often invisible to both society and literature.
"The vibrancy and dialogue of Trainspotting is its forte. It's a harrowing funny sneak into the life of junkies in Leith, Scotland, as told by a group of friends, each taking his turn to narrate. The main junky, Rents, is a smart lost one, and despite his despair and reversals, you start feeling for him, wanting for him. The structure of the book is loose and vignetty and doesn't always come together. For example, the chapter on Dave and his revenge, or wee Nina's story, seem out of place as it's unclear how they fit into the group. But other chapters, like the ones from Begbie's perspective, or Sick Boy's or Spud's, are fabulous for showing what it might be like to a reader who isn't more like Rents with philosophical Uni leanings. But in the end, it was the language that got me. I had to read the book out loud, at least in my head, to understand much of it, and ay wisnae always successful, ken, but I loved it, the slang, the pronunciation, the force of life on each page, every filthy witty piercing second."
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