It's a zombie reboot — Irvine Welsh's new Trainspotting novel

Times

6 days ago

After culture becomes dead, it becomes undead. This is the era we are in now: the era of the zombie reboot or 'necro-sequel', as the writer Sam Kriss recently termed the phenomenon. There are three Oasis albums in the official Top Five. Pulp had a triumphant Glastonbury. No longer do sequels spawn from recent successes but from movies two or three decades old: Twisters, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Gladiator II, 28 Years Later. It's almost as if our data-ravaged landscape, haunted by the AI-generated mutants of our collective memory, is preventing us from thinking new thoughts.
And now here comes Irvine Welsh's sequel to his drugs-and-lowlife debut, Trainspotting, the great It book of 1993, even if it is chiefly remembered via Danny Boyle's 1996 film. Who can forget the opium suppositories, the wads of soiled toilet roll or the dead baby, all captured with wit and verve in a pungent Scots vernacular? 'Sometimes ah think that people become junkies just because they subconsciously crave a wee bit ay silence,' observed the cynical skaghead Mark Renton.
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There have already been five spin-offs featuring characters from Trainspotting, including Porno (2002), set ten years later, and Skagboys (2012), a prequel that connected intravenous drug use and the subsequent Aids epidemic to rampant working-class unemployment under Margaret Thatcher.
So what makes Men In Love, billed as an immediate Trainspotting sequel, different? And why is Welsh, 66, publishing this now? He admitted in one interview that it was partly to capitalise on nostalgia for the 1990s, 'because people had lives then' — before the internet, mobile phones and social media hijacked them.
And what lives Welsh's characters led. Except in Men In Love, much of the grime has been wiped away to reveal a kind of cartoonish social comedy. We are at the dawn of the 1990s and the strapline 'choose life' has been replaced by 'choose love'. The self-conscious cynic Mark Renton, the manipulative lothario Sick Boy, the loveable loser Spud and the Rod Stewart-loving sociopath Begbie kick heroin and are on the hunt for some 'top drawer shagging'.
Sick Boy is the true spirit animal of the novel, a Rochester-esque figure of sexual anarchy who fantasises about having his way with his future mother-in-law and his (hoped for) unborn daughter. He is hustling his way round London, trying to make it in porn, but investing most of his energies into 'hunting bigger game' — ie, 'posh fanny'.
In rehab, he meets Amanda, the 'pampered princess of Isleworth', whose father is a high-ranking civil servant in Thatcher's government. Meanwhile, he's pursuing a hectic 'bedroom game' with: a 'fat bird' called Ashley ('Fashley'); her 'toothsome' best friend who is horribly injured in a car accident (he runs his hand up 'her good leg' in hospital); a smelly French minx called Fabienne; 'willowy' Marianne, his ex-lover in Leith (anal only, out of loyalty to Amanda); then, after he proposes to Amanda, her chief bridesmaid or 'ridesmaid', Jocelyn (also 'willowy'). The novel builds towards a Jilly Cooper-esque society wedding where the in-laws will meet the outlaws.
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Spud and Begbie (as well as secondary characters like Second Prize) remain in Leith. Spud is earnestly striving for a cosier life with long-suffering Alison. He is attracted to the idea of gaining 'better litrisy' through adult education classes, but the path to redemption is littered with old ladies' purses. Begbie, 'who never could look at a face without wanting to punch it', is in and out of prison, convinced that Renton (aka the 'Treacherous Ginger Bastard') is mocking him. You will recall how Renton double-crossed his friends at the end of Trainspotting. 'Ah'm gaunny scalp that ginger oaffay the c***'s heid. Wi a f***in machete. Just slice the top ay ehs f***in heid oaf,' Begbie vows.
In one of the book's darkest scenes — all of which are played for laughs, including sexual assault — Begbie, fresh from a menacing visit to the mother of his children, June (a 'mingin c***'), goes to a bar showing BBC coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It puts him in the mood for a Chinese takeaway, so he buys a chicken chow mein on the way home, marvelling at how 'they Chinky army c***s dinnae f*** aboot'. He vows to use similar tactics to bed June's sister, Olivia.
At this point, you might remember the rumour that Trainspotting didn't make the Booker Prize shortlist in 1993 because it offended the sensibilities of two female judges. This partly explains the disingenuous author's note at the end of the novel declaring that because it's set in the late 1980s, many of the characters 'express themselves in ways that we would now consider offensive and discriminatory'.
But the problem isn't the rancid attitudes of the characters. It's that Welsh doesn't offer any other perspective on the women, the gay characters or the 'chinkies' other than the one that leaves them totally dehumanised. There are a huge number of women in the novel and they fall into two camps, those that are sexy and those that are 'pathetic old post-sexual mutation[s]'. The sexy ones are distinguished by the tightness of their vaginas and whether they pack 'unsightly blubber in the arse'. But what unites all the women is that they are utterly passive and devoid of opinions, although there is some evidence they have feelings: 'If women must have mental health issues — and they must,' Sick Boy reflects, 'always best to err on the side of anorexia rather than obesity.'
Meanwhile, Renton, hauled up in Amsterdam, is the most enlightened man in love. He moons over the budding artist Monique, who refuses to confine herself to one lover. But his storyline about getting into dance music (yawn) is lacklustre. His voice — which, like Sick Boy's, is now rendered in standard English to reflect their move away from Scotland — is so drippy that there's very little to engage.
Men In Love is a book that possibly sounds more amusing in summary than in its 530-page reality. Much of it is perfectly entertaining. When Sick Boy watches the entrance of his baby son into the world, he struggles with his complex emotions. 'It dawns on me that this is why men need football: our inability to give birth … The ministry of frost that housed my heavy heart melts, falls out of me like a shite I'll never be able to get back up my arsehole.' But there's no disguising that Welsh's prose has lost some of its elasticity and there's nothing as daringly excessive as, say, Renton having sex with his dead brother's pregnant girlfriend on his coffin.
Ultimately, it reads like a literary car boot sale. You can pick up the odd gem and enjoy spending a few hours in a time warp. But most of what's on offer feels too worn down and shop-soiled to bring home.
Men In Love by Irvine Welsh (Jonathan Cape £20 530pp). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members