Trainspotting (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Irvine Welsh |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English, Urban Scots |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
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Publication date
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1993 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 344 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 34832527 |
| 823/.914 20 | |
| LC Class | PR6073.E47 T73 1994 |
| Followed by | Porno |
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. It takes the form of a collection of short stories, written in either Scots, Scottish English or British English, revolving around various residents of Leith, Edinburgh who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are implicitly portrayed as addictions that serve the same function as heroin addiction. The novel is set in the late 1980s.
Famously described as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent", the novel has since achieved a cult status, added to by the global success of the film based on it, Trainspotting (1996), directed by Danny Boyle. Welsh later wrote a sequel, Porno, in 2002. Skagboys, a novel that serves as a prequel, was published in April 2012.
The novel is split up into seven sections: the first six contain multiple chapters of varying length and differing focus. The novel's origins in short fiction are still visible though no segment or chapter is wholly independent of the others. The majority of the stories are narrated by the novel's central protagonist, Mark Renton.
Each character narrates differently, in a fashion comparable to stream-of-consciousness or representative of psychological realism. For example, Spud will refer to people internally as "cats" (Begbie is a jungle cat, while he himself is a house cat), and Sick Boy will occasionally entertain an inner-dialogue between himself and Sean Connery. Chapters narrated by Renton are written with Scots dialect terms spelled phonetically to better convey the character's accent and pronunciation to an audience acquainted with Standard English, while Davie's chapters ("Bad Blood", "Traditional Sunday Breakfast") are narrated in Scottish English with dialect also appearing phonetically. Other chapters are written from a third-person omniscient stance (in Standard English) to cover the actions and thoughts of different characters simultaneously. For example, "The First Shag in Ages" covers Spud and Renton's outing to a nightclub where they meet Dianne and her pal, followed by Renton's return to Dianne's and the awkward breakfast that ensues, all the while revealing what each character thinks of the other.
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