Latest news with #Trainspotting
Scotsman
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
What's on in Edinburgh today? 10 events to enjoy including Trainspotting sequel launch
1 . Irvine Welsh Men in Love Q&A and Exclusive Launch Party Celebrating the release of his new Trainspotting sequel Men in Love, Scottish author Irvine Welsh will participate in a Q&A with Jenni Fagan early in the evening, before heading over to Leith Arches for an exclusive launch party. The Q&A will take place at Ps and Gs Church on York Place from 7.30pm, with the album launch party kicking off from 8pm until 1am, and featuring the Sci Fi Soul Orchestra, Carl Loben, Steve Mac and more, with a limited number of exclusive vinyl and CD editions available on the night. | LISA FERGUSON Photo: Lisa Ferguson
Scotsman
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Men in Love by Irvine Welsh review: 'his paciest, funniest book in years'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The early stages of drug dependency and romantic love have such similar rushing, all-consuming power that scientific studies of their comparative neurological effects have been made. That a book about one group of young men's devastating heroin habits should be followed by another about their often self-destructive pursuits of sex and relationship highs therefore makes plenty of sense. Thirty-two years have passed since Leith tearaways Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie first leapt off the pages of Irvine Welsh's darkly delirious million-selling masterpiece Trainspotting. Danny Boyle's 1996 film adaptation subsequently made icons of the characters and their creator. There have been numerous prequel, sequel and spin-off novels and short stories of varying merit, plus an iffy follow-up movie (2017's T2, set decades after the original). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Irvine Welsh At the outset of Men In Love, merely weeks have expired since Trainspotting's end, when Renton chose life by ripping off his mates in a drug deal before disappearing with their cash. The mixture of guilt, rage, betrayal and confusion each man feels is as fresh as the sweat on Renton's brow, as he goes cold turkey in Amsterdam trying to get clean. He, Sick Boy and Spud are estranged, yet largely united in their resolve not to fall back on the smack (Begbie's tangential compulsion for violent mayhem, meanwhile, rages unchecked). But what should fill the void? Foreshadowing 2002's Porno, the book that inspired T2, pseudo-sophisticate Scots Italian manipulator Sick Boy is in London building a career in adult entertainment, while using and abusing various women to different ends. Including Amanda, an upper-class dropout he encounters at drug counselling. She forces him to feel forbidden feelings no natural born shagger should feel. The thickest yet most morally sound of them all, Spud, is in a relationship with Sick Boy's ex Alison, whom he showers with a desperate, cloying love she can't requite. In Amsterdam, Renton becomes immersed in the burgeoning acid house club scene, and a world of fluid sexual and romantic relationships he may not be emotionally equipped for. Begbie's devotion remains only to Leith, the blade and the bottle. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The raw, gritty, trippy urgency and hyper-realism that drove Welsh's debut novel has long-since faded from his writing. Some of his graphic descriptions of oftentimes squalid sex may leave you needing a shower. But the simple ease and joy with which he reinhabits these vivid characters makes this his paciest, funniest, most page-turning book in years. If there is a love to be felt, it's Welsh's for his Leith young team, who for all their flaws and indeed evils, he never leaves without hope of redemption - be it Sick Boy in his battle of wits with Amanda's toff hypocrite father in the build up to their wedding, or Begbie, the world's worst best man, hanging over the climactic posh nuptials like a black cloud, threatening to rain either rough class justice or purely psychotic chaos.
Irish Independent
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Irvine Welsh's Trainspotters fumble towards human connection in the expertly funny and tender Men in Love
Fiction This book, Men in Love is the third novel in Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting universe, but it sits second in the story's chronology – bridging the gap between the youthful anarchy of Trainspotting (1993) and the cynical scheming of Porno (2002). While Danny Boyle's movie T2 Trainspotting (2017) was loosely based on Porno, it aged the characters into middle age. Men in Love, by contrast, returns to the late 1980s, exploring the emotional fallout of addiction and betrayal, and deepening the internal lives of characters that is only hinted at on screen.
Daily Record
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Ewan McGregor vows to join record-breaking brothers on water after epic Pacific challenge
Brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean are currently aiming to row 14,000km from Peru to Australia and have been backed by actor Ewan McGregor. Ewan McGregor has backed a trio of brothers aiming to raise £1million on a record-breaking row across the Pacific - and vowed to join them on the water when they return to Scotland. Brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean are currently aiming to row 14,000km from Peru to Australia in a boat they built themselves - faster than anyone ever has before. Last weekend marked 100 days of their non-stop, unsupported row to raise money for clean water projects in Madagascar. In a chat with the brothers, McGregor has now revealed plans to join the Maclean Brothers for a row on their return to Scotland, inspired by their extraordinary ocean crossing. The A-list actor told how he had dreamed of an ocean journey ever since reading about early solo circumnavigations of the globe. "I've no idea what it feels like to be where you are now," he told the brothers in a call from London, "but I've always dreamed about it. "The documentary you made about crossing the Atlantic was fantastic. I thought it was brilliant. I watched it because I've got a little plan. "I'm not particularly interested in breaking records or being the first person to do something. I think that's all amazing and great. But where is adventure in our time, when most things have already been done?" "What I'd like is to find out what it feels like. And I'm sure where you are right now is as close to the pinnacle of adventure as you can get - because you're just out there on your own, the three of you. "There's no help if you need it. You're totally self-reliant. It's so fucking impressive. I'm really inspired by the three of you. It's incredible." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. On Sunday, Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean marked 100 days since leaving Peru on a rowing boat set for Australia. Now approaching Fiji, this crossing has been incredibly tough as they navigate salt sores, sleep deprivation, horrendous weather and isolation. It's all to raise £1M for clean water projects in Madagascar. The Trainspotting and Star Wars star shared with them a story from Norway, where a young fan approached him and Charley Boorman to thank them for their films. He said: "This guy in his early 20s came up to us and said, 'I watched your show lying on my dad's lap when I was a kid - and that's why I'm doing this.' We couldn't believe how old it made us feel. But I just love it." He added "In this world where we're increasingly just looking down at our phones, I love the idea of encouraging people to get out and see it." The conversation - during which McGregor quizzed the brothers on everything from energy sources to toilet tactics - began with Jamie playing McGregor Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. Jamie, 31, also confided in Ewan about his nerves over playing the pipes on arrival in Australia - just as they did when they arrived in Antigua when the brothers broke three world records crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 2020. "I'm more worried about my lips going," he said. "By the time we get to Australia, we'll have rowed halfway around the world. If I can't play them when we arrive, it's a bit of a disaster. Just dribbling down my front." The call ended with a promise. "When we finally make it home," said middle brother Jamie, "because we will be bringing the boat back to Scotland - let's go for a row, if you're up for it. Loch Lomond, the west coast - wherever you're based." Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. "I'd love that," McGregor replied. "I'd absolutely love that." The brothers' 28ft carbon fibre boat, Rose Emily, is named in memory of their late sister. As it has no engine and no sail, the brothers are pulling their way across the ocean in two-hour shifts. The trio from Edinburgh broke records in January 2020, when they became the first three brothers to row across any ocean, and the youngest and fastest trio to row across the Atlantic ocean in their 35 day trip. Now, in a journey they have called the Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row, they hope to become the quickest to cross the Pacific in just 120 days - 42 days quicker than the current record. The brothers have raised around £218,000 so far.
Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
It's a zombie reboot — Irvine Welsh's new Trainspotting novel
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. • Irvine Welsh: why I've turned Trainspotting into a disco album 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. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List 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 Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
