Skagboys

I should prefix this short review with a disclaimer that I'm a huge Welsh fan-boy and am probably incapable of writing anything totally subjective about this book. Since Trainspotting, I have read everything he has ever done and have bought the books the minute they have come out. I suppose he's the Leggi tutto

Maybe you grew up in a city on the wrong side of town. If so, you might find yourself saying I knew these characters or people who were very similar to them. Irvine Welsh is a master at creating characters that are so real, with each so flawlessly described, that you don’t lose track of who’s who in Leggi tutto

PERFECT I WANT MORE So happy to be reunited with these characters. Love these guys more than words can describe.

As one other reviewer wrote, reading Skagboys is like meeting your old long lost friends. Trainspotting is one of my five favourite novels of all time and a prequel where all the characters are in their early twenties is like a treat. There are few books where the characters are so memorable that fi Leggi tutto

Since reading ' Trainspotting ' around the time it came out I have read and, to one degree or another, enjoyed every one of Irvine Welsh's books. Before writing this review I had a look round at some of the other reviews and notice that this book does seem to polarise opinion, generally though most of Leggi tutto

For the purposes of this review I decided to read Skagboys, Trainspotting and Porno one after another to get a true feel for the quality of each. I'd read prior to embarking on this epic trek through the 'trilogy' that Skagboys is simply too long-winded and meandering compared to the pithy set-piece Leggi tutto

It's been a long time – 15 years? – since I read Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, but its prequel, Skagboys, feels even better, at once more ambitious, darker, and funnier than its predecessor. Focusing once again on the same four characters (Mark Renton, Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson, Spud, and Begbie), Leggi tutto

Even though I am a big fan Welsh's work, this book worked a lot better than I had expected. It is, of course the prequel to Trainspotting , and fills in the backgrounds of our favourite characters during the 1980s, including their introduction to heroin. Like Trainspotting, and many of Welsh's other bo Leggi tutto

Despite the mixed reviews I had seen, I love the 'Trainspotting' boys and it was good to add to ther backstories with this prequel. Not as jovial as 'Porno' but with some fabulous gallows humour in places and when he tries, Mr Welsh describes his home town of Edina with a wonderfully bleak turn of p Leggi tutto

As a long time Welsh fan, I suppose I could be considered a little biased - but really, in all honesty, this is one of the cult Scottish author's finest efforts to date. Skagboys revisits the sunny port of Leith and adjoining Edinburgh, and the eclectic cast of characters that made up Welsh's debut e Leggi tutto