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New Irvine Welsh rather than the genre.
Halfway through this right now... to be honest, I have to say it does a very good job of reminding you of just how squalid Trainspotting (the book) was, compared to Trainspotting (the movie)- a difference I had thus far been unable to pinpoint, but which, as far as I can tell now, comes down to:
Trainspotting (the book) was about a bunch of really unpleasant bastards. Its genius was in making you care about and sympathise with them. And yes, like them.
Trainspotting (the movie) was about a bunch of guys who are set up as cool from the word go, who proceed to act like bastards and you go along with it.
I kind of liked "Marabou Stork Nightmares"... most of "The Acid House" was good... "Ecstasy" had two good stories out of three, one of which was highly unoriginal... "Filth", for the first half read like a parody of Irvine Welsh but got its shit together mid-way through... "Glue" seemed to be getting back on track (so to speak), but didn't let you get quite as close to the characters as "TS" did. "Trainspotting" was entirely painted in shades of grey... "Filth", especially, seemed to lose a lot of the grey. "Glue" gave us four basic shades of grey, but stuck to them fairly rigidly.
"Porno" brings the grey back and I'm kind of impressed with so far. They're the same old characters, large as life and twice and bastard-sized... I'm remembering why I liked "Trainspotting" so much again now...
Sick Boy, Renton, Begbie and Spud, he does SO well, which is why "TS" was such a great book. "Juice" Terry from "Glue" also plays a major role here, and was one of the better-drawn characters in that book as well.
It's the new characters he's not so good at- Nikki, especially, seems- not badly characterised, not even badly-written... she just seems like a character in a book. Which, of course, is all she is, but... I dunno... the thing with the others is that they seemed REAL for the time you were reading them. (And it's not just the dialect thing- Sick Boy's poshed up a lot in the last ten years, and it doesn't make his character any less immediate.)
Before I read "Glue", I'd've said Welsh had pretty much lost out to Niall Griffiths in the "youth angst and drugs" stakes, Griffiths' "Sheepshagger" being one of the best contemporary novels I've read in many a year. "Glue" saw him attempting to transcend the gimmicks, and write like a novelist. What I'm loving so far about "Porno" is that he's gone back to the gimmicks, but is doing them as a more mature novelist. It's at least on a par with Griffiths' scouse love & SM epic "Kelly + Victor" (which was fucking fantastic for the first half, then kind of lost it when you realised Griffiths doesn't "do" women as convincingly as men... at least not as far as this- admittedly male- reader can tell).
Still somehow not as good as "Trainspotting". Very probably his best since, though. |
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