Dead Men's Trousers

Product Information

The evolution of Renton and Sick Boy's characters follows on from the previous installments in a believable and relatable way. Renton appears to be successfully managing DJs and runs into his nemesis, Begbie, on an aeroplane (no escape). Nonetheless, his immature selfishness is getting somewhat tedious at this point, and is nowhere near as amusing as Begbie’s mutated psychopathy, Sick Boy’s towering bastardry, and Spud’s endearing daftness. Sono una sorta di catarsi, però potrebbero funzionare anche qualora ci si volesse sentire persone migliori: difficilmente qualcuno potrà ritenersi peggiore di un drogato, bastardo, manipolatore, privo di principi morali; di un drogato ladro e accattone; di un drogato traditore seriale; di un alcolista psicopatico e folle.

After ending on a totally holy shit moment, Welsh picks up Dead Men’s Trousers from that precise point - thank fuck. If you are locked into the Irvine Welsh line, this is a book written by a talented crafter and you will enjoy it at least almost as much as the previous in the series.

Seeing them all behave exactly as we would expect them to was gorgeous; seeing them do things we would never have cooked up in a million years was total fucking chaos. Welsh makes these amoral misadventures so propulsive, so joyfully awful, that you have to go with the flow…this roues’ romp is about as much fun as you can have between two book covers. To top it off, the constant flying back and forth between countries every chapter gives the novel a strong feeling of vacancy and disconnection (and not the effective, intentional Bret Easton Ellis kind). Pochi libri hanno a che fare con il piacere di leggere (del tutto personale) come quelli di questa saga; mi ritrovo a girare le pagine con un ghigno beffardo, mi vien da credere che più di me si sia divertito solo il loro autore a scriverli. With Dead Men's Trousers, Welsh shows no interest in good - or remotely literary - fiction, writing in a fashion more akin to the ten-a-penny airport genre paperback than someone who came within a bawhair of winning the Booker prize.

Here he is talking about Sick Boy and Mark and implicitly reflecting on most of Welsh’s canon: “Him and Sick Boy thegither: it eywis annoyed the fuck oot ay ays when they went on aboot drugs … Ah mean, take the cunts or dinnae; but dinnae fuckin talk aboot them twenty-four/seven! But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and – much to Mark’s astonishment – doesn’t seem interested in revenge.Since reading Trainspotting, when it came out in 1993, I have read all of Irvine Welsh's books and, to one degree or another, enjoyed them all, so - full disclosure - I came to Dead Men's Trousers as a massive and long time fan of Irvine Welsh's work. Provate a scrivere rinunciando completamente al congiuntivo, è una fatica cane (o più precisamente cagnolo), si tratta di dover rimettere mano alla scrittura e peggiorarla ad arte. To paraphrase James McAvoy as Charles Xavier in , X-Men: First Class, ‘Shagging hoors will not bring you peace, my friend,’” Sick Boy declares solemnly at one point.

The novel also features several cameo appearances from characters from the previous novels including Mikey Forrester and the hilarious Juice Terry. Dead Men’s Trousers feels like coming home to old friends and the throw backs to Trainspotting – the PERFECT execution of tying these stories back in together after so many years; some mentions very obvious and others so beautifully subtle it almost brings a tear to the eye – had me much more emotional than I was prepared for. I think it would have been utterly unrealistic to expect another Trainspotting - even though the 4 guys stay true to who they are as people, it would have been weird to find them in the same situations 20 years down the line. The stewardess, not the lovely Jenny I was chatting tae, but a low-rent, pleb-serving, varicose-veined battleaxe, bike-rode into decrepitude over decades by the few hetero pilots, without even a hint of a sparkler thrown into the mix, is right over, her crabbit pus rammed into my coupon.

Chained to a Railway: One of Begbie's paintings Blood on the Tracks depicts a man who he subconsciously made to look like Renton tied to train tracks. Rents is still battling some demons; almost making a life for himself but not quite ever getting things right.