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Mark Renton #2

Trainspotting

Name: Trainspotting
Rating: 4.11 (177779 reviews)
Author: Irvine Welsh

Irvine Welsh January 1, 1993

4.11 177.8k Ratings

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Synopsis

Ils sont quatre amis inséparables qui ont en commun une enfance, une ville, des voisins, le chômage. Et surtout une dévotion appliquée pour une seule et unique héroïne en forme de seringue. On entend ces quatre-là, on les écoute : chacun raconte son Edimbourg, entre deux pintes de bière, après un fix, avant une tasse de thé, ou pendant une baston à coup d’aiguilles à tricoter taillées en pointe. On voit les corps mangés par le virus, la drogue, les hallucinations, et puis quelque chose se détache : on est d’Edimbourg, mais comme on est de Fresnes ou de la Santé. Il faut s’échapper. Livre culte des années 1990, Trainspotting a été porté à l’écran par Dany Boyle.

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Skagboys

★ 4.07

Irvine Welsh

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas. The way out is heroin.

It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence - the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all.

Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred - but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.

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★ 4.11

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In Coney Island, Brooklyn, lonely widow Sarah Goldfarb wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. In her obsessive quest, she becomes addicted to diet pills, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and best friend, Tyrone, attempt to secure an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by selling heroin.

Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares.

"Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review

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With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh's finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam.

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★ 4.06

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The lives of three very different groups of people--gangsters on the streets of Manila, middle-class suburban families, and a group of street children and the psychologist studying them--intertwine in an intricately woven tale, set in the Philippines, that spans three generations. 22,500 first printing.

Trainspotting

More in Mark Renton Series

Skagboys

Books similar to Trainspotting

Skagboys

Requiem for a Dream

Filth

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

Infinite Jest

The Bean Trees

Factotum

The Tesseract

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