Scotland Takes Drugs in Psychic Defence

Growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, I've lived a rather sheltered life. Sure, I've come across the random acquaintance who, on occasion, smokes weed or takes hallucinogenic drugs, but I have no absolutely no experience with "drug cultures" or junkies. This, however, is precisely the culture depicted by Irvine Welsh in his cult classic, Trainspotting. I had watched the film based on the book during my freshman year study abroad experience in London. The professor of my British Life and Culture course was obsessed with the evolution of British youth culture, and Trainspotting certainly defines a particular area its history.

The novel follows a group of friends in Scotland, bonded by their mutual need to shoot up. They share everything: drug cocktails, needles, AIDS, and girls. Of course, their destructive habits are not without consequences, and the book's plot serves as a chronicle of both their individual and mutual downfalls. This is, of course, not at all surprising. Fortunately for both the characters and the reader, it ends with a glimmer of hope.

What sets Trainspotting apart from other novels that examine the same dark subject matter is the language and perspective. Welsh writes his chapters from the viewpoints of a variety of narrators, each accompanied by his or her own distinctive Scottish dialect. The phonetic spelling of these dialects can be hard to read and understand at first (for example, my ignorance of the Scottish slang word for "baby" had me missing that one of the characters had an abortion in the opening chapters), but as the novel continues, this difficulty is almost completely erased. The confusion of the reader in experiencing the phonetic spelling of the Scottish accent, in my opinion, even enhances the confusion that the drug addled minds of Welsh's characters experience.

This book is a fascinating one to read, both as a character study and as a literary work. I give it a B+ and would highly recommend it, although it is certainly not for the faint of heart. Those opposed to reading graphic descriptions of unsafe drug injections or sexual acts, all told in extremely explicit language, should skip this one.

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"I didn't have any concept of Trainspotting being published. It was a selfish act. I did it for myself." (Irvine Welsh)