Review of “Trainspotting” by Irvine Welsh

I have never really written a review of a book before, but I figured it’s a “literary” thing to do, and seeing as I intend this blog to be literary, I figured why not? I just finished reading “Trainspotting” by Irvine Welsh, and though that it would be an interesting first review since it’s a contemporary novel, and yet (I would say) is fairly well known.

The first thing that is noticeable in “Trainspotting” is the use of the Scots dialect. A lot of people claim that this makes the book extremely difficult to read. While it can be a little tricky at first, I got used to it pretty quickly; once I got into it, I really loved it. I felt like I was reading a book in a foreign language, and yet was completely fluent. In fact, I feel that the dialect isn’t really difficult to read if one sounds out words phonetically in their head. Also, there is a glossary in the back for words that aren’t used by most other English speaking people (two examples are “keks” for underpants and “bairn” for baby).

Another “issue” many people may have with the novel is Welsh’s laxness with grammar. At times, the tense switches between past and present tense. Also, Welsh uses the dialogue dash instead of quotation marks, and many times mixes narration and dialogue within the same paragraph without informing the reader of the switch. While the unconventional grammar can be a little tricky at times, overall I didn’t have problems with it. At times, I would read for pages before it hit me that the tense had changed back and forth multiple times. I feel that this ability to pull the reader in to the point where they don’t notice the problems with dialect or grammar and just focus on the story itself shows how great Welsh is.

The plot development of Welsh’s novel is quite interesting. Several of the chapters in the book had been previously published as short stories, and many other chapters could stand alone as short stories as well. From chapter to chapter, Welsh shifts focus on different characters, moving between first and third person narrations, as well as different points in time. This provides an interesting effect, because it gives little snippets of people lives, which don’t seem that relevant in their own right, but in the overall picture have a larger meaning. Welsh also makes casual references to events from time to time which pop up again later on in the novel. This is definitely one of those novels that can be read again and again, each time shedding new light.

In conclusion, “Trainspotting” is definitely a worthwhile read, and one which I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys good literature. Also, for anyone who says “well, I’ve seen the movie,” the book is quite different than the movie, and has many more memorable scenes. It is quite interesting to notice the similarities though. At times, scenes in the movie will use different characters than Welsh used in the book. (For example, the scene in the movie where Spud wakes up and has shit the bed actually happens to another character in the book). Irvine Welsh is truly one of the top modern writers of the English language.