Helpful Score: 2
A great book that gives a much more in depth look than the film. The dialogue can be difficult to read as it's written phonetically in the thick scottish accent but once you get used to it, it goes much faster. This edition also has a handy glossary at the end to help you out.
Helpful Score: 1
Great read. A few odd verbs and nouns scattered here and there, strange dialects. But, shite, bollocks to you if you can't understand me accent.
Helpful Score: 1
It's been a long time since I read this book but it definitely made a lasting impact on me. I actually read the book after watching the movie and as per usual the book is better. In the movie you only hear/see Ewan McGregor's character (Mark Renton's) point of view. In the book you also get blurbs of some of the other characters' POV. I'd say you HAVE to watch the movie (if only to see a young Ewan McGregor) but you SHOULD read the book. It takes a bit to get comfortable reading Irvine Welsh because he writes with a Scottish accent...spells etc true to the Scottish dialect which always takes me a page or two to flow with. Kinda like Elizabethan English only not! Afterwards I went through and read all of Welsh's other books. Trainspotting is still my favorite.
Odd low lifes in Edinburgh...a cult sensation.
I had a real hard time with the language of the book (dialect) but if you are up for a challenge it is very entertaining.
Trainspotting
by Irvine Welsh
Written in phonetic Scottish vernacular, so it takes donks (or is it yonks?) tae raid. And it's first-person narrative from many perspectives, so it's hard to ken which gadge is tellin each chapter--you have to keep an eye (ear?) out for favorite expressions--such as Spud callin gadges "catboy" or Sick Boy's bad Sean Connery impression ("yesh, Shimon")--or hope another character addresses the narrator by name. Set in the late 1980s, Trainspotting is as much about HIV, poverty, racism, sectarian violence, and unemployment as it is about heroin.
by Irvine Welsh
Written in phonetic Scottish vernacular, so it takes donks (or is it yonks?) tae raid. And it's first-person narrative from many perspectives, so it's hard to ken which gadge is tellin each chapter--you have to keep an eye (ear?) out for favorite expressions--such as Spud callin gadges "catboy" or Sick Boy's bad Sean Connery impression ("yesh, Shimon")--or hope another character addresses the narrator by name. Set in the late 1980s, Trainspotting is as much about HIV, poverty, racism, sectarian violence, and unemployment as it is about heroin.
Haven't read this book, it's in brand new condition!
