Skagboys

So I have just finished Skagboys by Irvine Welsh. It's a precursor, I'm not sure I'd call it a prequel, to Trainspotting. I haven't read Trainspotting for years, probably not since before the film came out but it follows a similar narrative style and uses a Scottish dialect,although there was some language which reminded me of a Clockwork Orange. The characters all tend to tell their story which means that the jump from different characters between chapters can take a bit of working out to determine who is narrating the chapter.

One review I read commented on Welsh's tendency to to rework the same characters and the same story.

It charts Renton's descent into heroin addiction, from promising student at Aberdeen accompanying his father on Miner's Strike rallies, to it taking over his entire life, to the extent that he ditches his girlfriend to spend more time with it.

Familiar characters such as Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie are also introduced. Other characters are also brought into the picture and their lives all connect, all seemingly to ultimately connect to the two individuals who work in the pharmaceutical factory which is the source of all their woe.

Although the book is set within Thatcher's 80s, the story never quite goes so far to fully pin the blame for Scotland's heroin epidemic on Thatcherite Britain and the closing of the docks, mines and other sources of employment for the working class man. It's there as a theme and touched upon but it doesn't go so far as to say it outright.

Similarly, the story never quite deals with the question of individual responsibility. No-one forced Renton to have his first hit and his spiral into addiction takes time, there's a significant period during which he is not an addict.

Towards the end of the book a few of the characters are in Rehab and one of the people running the rehab programme observes that so long as he doesn't catch aids or overdose, Renton will grow out of his addiction. This basically indicates that Renton is an angry young man full of angst and hormones and he'll get over it all.

Sex, but not love, feature strongly in the book. It's a fine line Welsh treads and perhaps strays over, between gratuitous and simply reflecting that it is regarded as both commodity and means of escapism as much as it becomes a trap. I don't know that I would call the book misogynous but the female characters are really bit players, becoming victims of their own circumstances rather than taking control of their own destiny. Perhaps that is true of the male characters too.

So overall, worth a read. I plan to re-read it, once I've finished Trainspotting.

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