Review: Trainspotting (1993)
This is a very brief review of Trainspotting, the debut novel by Irvine Welsh published in 1993. It went on to be adapted to a Danny Boyle film of the same name, released in 1996. Graphic content referenced, and spoilers ahead.
The novel is a painfully vivid depiction of a specific point and place in British history. I count myself lucky that I have no first-hand experience of the deprivation and systematic self-neglect depicted in the book, but Welsh's writing managed to uncompromisingly portray those aspects in a strikingly clear way. I nearly quit reading the book multiple times due to the sheer effort required to find anything to sympathise with amongst the main characters. Mark Renton, the protagonist of the novel, is such a spineless weathervane of a man that he only manages to escape the late-80s Leith heroin scene by betraying and alienating himself from his "friends" during a drug deal.
Renton's self-imposed exile at the end of the novel is enforced by his fear of Begbie, a violent psychopath who he sycophantically cowers beside for much of the novel. Begbie has only one POV chapter (as far as I can remember), in which Welsh dares to depict Begbie's physical and emotional abuse of his pregnant girlfriend in utterly uncompromising prose. On the back of that chapter, I understood why the novel was rejected from the 1993 Booker Prize shortlist for "offending the sensibilities of two judges". The clarity with which Welsh depicts the abusive, debaucherous, and immoral behaviour of the main characters is a monument to fiction unfettered by the expectations of polite society.
As a final note (I did say short review), there is one chapter that utterly stands out from the rest of the book whilst simultaneously thriving because of its context. The chapter entitled Bad Blood details the revenge scheme of a HIV-positive man (Davie) upon a rapist (Alan Venters) who infected Davie by proxy. The structuring of the chapter means that we don't see the detail of Davie's revenge scheme until after he puts Venters through it - the text guides us to thinking that Davie has raped, mutilated, and killed Venters' estranged son. Given that, it is a grim commentary on the content of the rest of the book that I felt a distinct pang of relief that Davie had only chloroformed the child and dressed him up in stage makeup. The book is, to borrow a one word review from somebody else, "grim".
To provide a final takeaway, Trainspotting is roughly equivalent to having a dirty needle stuck in the moral centre of your brain whilst an angry Scottish alcoholic stomps on it. Read it, and beware.