Skagboys by Irvine Welsh

Mark Renton seems to have it all: he's the first in his family to go to university, he's young, has a pretty girlfriend and a great social life. But 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 badly handicapped younger brother dies the family bonds start to weaken, his life flips out of control, and he succumbs to the defeatism and the heroin which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas

This was such a fun read. It has a dark undercurrent of Thatcher's Britain in the 80s and heroin addiction, but the darkness makes the humour all the more stark. If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you'll like this too. In fact I think I'd go as far as to say that I liked this one more.

Even though I am a big fan Welsh's work, this book worked a lot better than I had expected.
It is, of course the prequel to Trainspotting, and fills in the backgrounds of our favourite characters during the 1980s, including their introduction to heroin.

Like Trainspotting, and many of Welsh's other books it is written in part in Scottish dialect.
It amazes me, with the writing, how talented Welsh is to be able to have a different written form for each character. For each chapter before the narrator is fully revealed, it is almost always obvious who the character is just by the formation of their sentences and word choices.

At some 550 pages, this book sat in my shelf for a long time for two reasons - it is a lengthy investment in time, but more importantly, I was concerned it wouldn't be excellent. It could have been a shallow, or poorly constructed reverse-engineering of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie. It could have done a disservice to Trainspotting, one of my favourite books of my youth. Thankfully, it was none of these things.

Excellent, and 5 Stars.