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 world they despise. This particular slice of humanity has nothing left but the blackest of humor and a sharpness of wit. American readers can use the glossary in the back to translate the slang and dialect--essential, since the dialogue makes the book. This is a bleak vision sung as musical comedy.


The New York Times Book Review, Mark Jolly
Blisteringly funny ... don't abandon everything for the movie. It's worth making the effort with Trainspotting not merely because relatively few writers have rummaged through this particular enclave of British youth culture, but because even fewer have dug there so deeply.


Rebel, Inc.
The best book ever written by man or woman ...deserves to sell more copies than the Bible.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Trainspotting is the novel that launched the sensational career of Irvine Welsh - an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating group portrait of blasted lives in Edinburgh that has the linguistic energy of A Clockwork Orange and the literary impact of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Rents, Sick Boy, Mother Superior, Swanney, Spuds, and Begbie are as unforgettable a clutch of rude boys, junkies, and nutters as readers will ever encounter.

FROM THE CRITICS

Nick Hornby

Irvine Welsh writes with skill, wit, and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing in decades. -- Sunday Times

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