With a title like Glue, it would seem reasonable to assume that Irvine Welsh's fifth book is a meditation on the pitfalls of solvent abuse. In fact the word refers to the bonds that unite four boys, all of whom have grown up in "the scheme"--i.e., Edinburgh's slum-clearance flats, whose optimistic construction in the 1970s give way to the poverty, unemployment, and crime of the succeeding decades. It is the pervasive despair of these crumbling projects that defines the lives of the protagonists: budding DJ Carl Ewart, boxer Billy Birrell, work-shy, sex-mad Terry Lawson, and Andrew Galloway, a drug addict who has tested HIV-positive.

Recounted in the author's inimitable style, Glue is a grungy, Scots-accented bildungsroman. The novel follows the boys through their early forays into sex, drink, drugs, and football violence. Contemplating his erotic initiation, Carl Ewart poses such crucial questions as "How dae ah chat up a bird?" and "Do I wear a rubber johnny?" Here and there Welsh injects political commentary into the mix: Billy Birrell, for example, reflects that "having money is the only way to get respect. Desperate, but that's the world we live in now." For the most part, though, the author sticks to sex and violence and his famously offhand one-liners: "Guilt and shaggin, they go the gither like fish n chips." Fans of Trainspotting will love the book, even down to the brief appearance of Begbie and Renton. Others may feel that Glue is more of the same, and that, despite its graphic charms, the book finds Welsh stuck in a rut. --Jerry Brotton


From Publishers Weekly
Spanning four decades, Welsh's first full-length novel since 1998's Filth chronicles the friendship of four boys from the Edinburgh projects who cling together through football brawls, "shagging" ordeals, encounters with the law, drug experimentation and loss. The POV of this brutally dark tale shifts smoothly among the friends, showcasing Welsh's finely tuned ear for dialect as well as his ability to craft rich, memorable characters. Although the lads differ in many ways Juice Terry Lawson is a bawdy ladies' man with an eye for resalable goods; Billy "Business" Birrell is a rational-minded, all-around athlete with an iron fist; NSIGN Carl Ewart is a philosopher king and a talented disc jockey; "wee" Andrew Galloway (aka Gally) is a warmhearted but luckless drug addict they are bound by the same set of principles: never hit a woman, always back up your mates and never snitch on anyone. Welsh's prose is sometimes coarse and sometimes surprisingly introspective as he describes the introduction of new technologies into factories and contemplates changing mores in Scotland. These general observations give depth to the foreground adventures of Terry, Billy, Carl and Gally, who, despite changing circumstances, strive to stay mates as they approach middle age and the new millennium. A character from Trainspotting makes a cameo appearance during a bungled heist, and readers will note other correspondences with Welsh's cult classic. Stocked with his usual quirky, sympathetic characters, this rollicking new tale sparkles with the writer's trademark satiric wit. Its heft and narrative breadth should convince any remaining skeptics that Welsh now effectively the grand old man of in-your-face Scottish fiction is a writer to be taken seriously. (May)Forecast: Considerably longer than any of Welsh's previous efforts, this brick of a book will sit well on display tables. Loyal readers will likely pack readings on a nine-city author tour; if critics pay homage, too, this could be Welsh's biggest seller since Trainspotting. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Ye dinnae know abot us without you hav read a book by the name of Trainspotting, but that's brilliant. In Glue, Welsh continues his tale of the rollicking lads of Edinburgh (this time four boys growing up in the projects), and I haf to sey he gives us our due. O' course, the thing is, thir's nought all tae dae at nights roond our way; ye need a bit ay excitement. No question but that we can supply that, what with havin some fun at the expense of the wankers and tryin tae shag everything in sight when it doesnae interfere with our fitba. On a slow night we might even be inventive enough to set fire to the security dugs. O' course, it's all barry to beat the band. About two-thirds of the way through (at which point the persistent reader is awarded a Certificate in Scots Dialect), Welsh's novel settles into Standard English, and the lads' similarities to slackers from Long Island to Fresno is even more apparent. Welsh continues to demonstrate a keen ear for the Scottish dialect and a black humor appropriate to the bleak settings. Along with James Kelman, Welsh is proof that Scotland has not only its own Parliament but its own literature as well. For all larger public libraries. Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
In his big new novel, Welsh has each of four working-class Edinburgh friends-- Terry, Carl, Billy, and Gally--report on his condition, if he can, at 10-year intervals. In 1970, they are school-starting age; in 1980, teenage football hooligans champing at the bit to leave school; in 1990, well launched on their life paths; and in 2000, incipient midlifers licking the wounds they've accumulated. Unfortunately, by 2000, only three check in, and Gally's suicide before their eyes is the others' primary wound. The readers Welsh won with Trainspotting, book and movie, will here reencounter his staples: relentless profanity, plenty of fighting between gangs a guy never seems to get old enough to leave, and, of course, lots of drinking, drugging, and graphic "shagging"--all set to an ambient dance-rock soundtrack and told in phonetically rendered low Scots. Newcomers will probably find the language the biggest challenge in what is, finally, a pretty standard, naturalistic generational saga that could very easily be the basis of another popular film. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Jonathan Letham, New York Times Book Review, 13 May 2001
[S]uperb and hilarious....Relaxed, generous, and wise.


Dennis Cooper, LA Weekly, 27 April 2001
[A]s thrilling and ambitious a book as Welsh has written.


Review
?Welsh is brilliant in what he does... This is his most readable and memorable novel since Trainspotting.? ? Independent on Sunday

?Full of incident, mad, crackling dialogue, attractively appalling characters, and some of the funniest and rudest sex scenes I have read since Philip Roth?s Portnoy?s Complaint... wild, brave and funny.? ? Sunday Times


Book Description
An epic novel about the bonds of friendship from the author of Trainspotting. The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century—from punk to techno, from speed to E. Their mutual loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don't hit women, and, most important, never snitch—on anyone. Glue has the Irvine Welsh trademarks—crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor—but it is also a grown-up book about growing up—about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

An epic novel about the bonds of friendship from the author of Trainspotting. The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century—from punk to techno, from speed to E. Their mutual loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don't hit women, and, most important, never snitch—on anyone. Glue has the Irvine Welsh trademarks—crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor—but it is also a grown-up book about growing up—about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.

About the Author:

Irvine Welsh is the author of the best-selling Trainspotting, as well as The Acid House, Marabou Stork Nightmares, Ecstasy, and Filth. He lives in London.

FROM THE CRITICS

Jonathan Lethem - New York Times Book Review

Relaxed, generous and wise, Glue should slow the superficial comparisons of Welsh to William Burroughs and Cèline. Here he's really more like an unflinching contemporary Dickens—if Dickens had freed his characters to gather in an alehouse and write one of his novels by Dictaphone, as an oral history.

Dennis Cooper

[A]s thrilling and ambitious a book as Welsh has written.

Jonathan Letham

[S]uperb and hilarious....Relaxed, generous, and wise. —New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Spanning four decades, Welsh's first full-length novel since 1998's Filth chronicles the friendship of four boys from the Edinburgh projects who cling together through football brawls, "shagging" ordeals, encounters with the law, drug experimentation and loss. The POV of this brutally dark tale shifts smoothly among the friends, showcasing Welsh's finely tuned ear for dialect as well as his ability to craft rich, memorable characters. Although the lads differ in many ways Juice Terry Lawson is a bawdy ladies' man with an eye for resalable goods; Billy "Business" Birrell is a rational-minded, all-around athlete with an iron fist; NSIGN Carl Ewart is a philosopher king and a talented disc jockey; "wee" Andrew Galloway (aka Gally) is a warmhearted but luckless drug addict they are bound by the same set of principles: never hit a woman, always back up your mates and never snitch on anyone. Welsh's prose is sometimes coarse and sometimes surprisingly introspective as he describes the introduction of new technologies into factories and contemplates changing mores in Scotland. These general observations give depth to the foreground adventures of Terry, Billy, Carl and Gally, who, despite changing circumstances, strive to stay mates as they approach middle age and the new millennium. A character from Trainspotting makes a cameo appearance during a bungled heist, and readers will note other correspondences with Welsh's cult classic. Stocked with his usual quirky, sympathetic characters, this rollicking new tale sparkles with the writer's trademark satiric wit. Its heft and narrative breadth should convince any remaining skeptics that Welsh now effectively the grand old man of in-your-face Scottish fiction is a writer to be taken seriously. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal