TRAINSPOTTING

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by Irvine Welsh (1993)

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Mark Renton sees through all the shite that modern society has to offer. The be a good boy and do well in school and you’ll get somewhere good. The get a good university degree or get a good trade and either one will do to get the good job. To earn the good money and then to spend the good money on the good house before filling it with fine expensive products to show off to your mates. Then get married to the good woman and together you and wifey can produce some good wee bairns. Renton observes the cycle of life: rinse and repeat. But is there any way out? They just don’t teach you that in school or university. And, if there’s no way out, maybe resistance is all that’s left. In a grim world where the government and ruling class have spent the past decade of the 1980s crushing all obvious dissent, what path might be left to those who want to refuse? The path of dropping out through smack. Not free love and communes. Not peace and flower power. Not civil disobedience and other forms of social activism. Just the smack and the brief moment of self-assurance that arrives when the drug is administered. Heroin use is a means to exert control over yourself and zone out whilst every other fool is fighting for scraps. At least, Rents can rationalise it this way. An unglamourous yet accurate portrayal of the self in relation to capitalism. Fiction. 430 pages.

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DETAILS:

Title: Trainspotting

Year: 1993

Author: Irvine Welsh

Pages: 430

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Book review by Keith Salter