Dead Men's Trousers

Product Information

In shifting POVs, we also catch up with Sick Boy (now the owner of a high-class escort agency) and Spud (still a loveable loser, but getting by the best he can), and as the four eventually all cross paths again for the first time in decades, Renton finds himself forced to pay off even more debts (which leads him to plead poverty despite a first class lifestyle and homes on two continents). Anyone expecting harrowing junkie trauma probably shouldn't have read Trainspotting in the first place.

Dead men’s trousers will have you gasping in shock at the violence, laughing with guilty pleasure at the antics of Sick boy and Renton and feeling deep pity for the plight of poor spud. Not to mention, this new novel also directly takes place after the solo Begbie novel Blade Artist which feels like required reading now. But Begbie – now teetotal, and a successful artist living in California with a wife and two young children – comes over all Zen.

It’s bookended by a detached and oddly cursory subplot in which Begbie is being stalked by a rogue policeman who is convinced he’s a serial killer. Sticky Situation: One of the DJs Renton represents falls asleep before a gig and another glues a dildo to his forehead. Probably most famous for his gritty depiction of a gang of Scottish Heroin addicts, Trainspotting (1993), Welsh focuses on the darker side of human nature and drug use. He rolled on, through paragraph after paragraph of purplish prose about the horrors of war, until he was, eventually, interrupted by the woman at the other end of the phone.

It is these three characters that really make the book an enjoyable ride, and a fitting conclusion to one of the greatest literary saga I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Most guys would love the powers Sick boy and Juice Terry have over the opposite sex at the same time as been appalled at the treatment these women get at the hands of these philanderers. Far from it as events career out of hand, and the brother in law is shamed and outcast from the family home. Sono una sorta di catarsi, però potrebbero funzionare anche qualora ci si volesse sentire persone migliori: difficilmente qualcuno potrà ritenersi peggiore di un drogato, bastardo, manipolatore, privo di principi morali; di un drogato ladro e accattone; di un drogato traditore seriale; di un alcolista psicopatico e folle.There are plenty of hints of another book on the way and a sub-plot left hanging, so I don't think we have seen the last of these characters, but what will the mash up be? The novel is a page-turner for several brief stints in the second half, there are moments of levity at times when Welsh hit the nail on the head again with the right turn of phrase or piece of undeniable Scottishness, and the use of illustrations is an innovative addition.

Characters get drawn into some campy (but enjoyable) crime capers, there is plenty of sex, experimentation with new drugs, and giving the boots to the wideos that deserve it, but the whole enterprise lacks heart. Our anti-heroes like to think they've changed and grown up, but when it comes down to it, they haven't evolved nearly as much as they like to think.

View image in fullscreen On the wild side … Ewen Bremner as Spud, Ewan McGregor as Renton, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy and Robert Carlyle as Begbie in the 2017 film T2 Trainspotting. He added that "by the end, what could've been a fitting, apt, even startling counterweight to Trainspotting has been weighed down with so much awkward sex, so many grown men on drugs and so many antic, unlikely capers, that the great idea Welsh had at the beginning has been lost".