Porno
Irvine Welsh
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
5.50 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.40 (d)
Pages
484
Publisher
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication Date
May 2003
ISBN
9780393324501
Book ISBN 10
0393324508
About Book
Reviews
The Trainspotting lads are back...and in worse shape than ever.
In the last gasp of youth, Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson is back in Edinburgh. He taps into one last great scam: directing and producing a porn film. To make it work, he needs bedfellows: the lovely Nikki Fuller-Smith, a student with ambition, ego, and troubles to rival his own; old pal Mark Renton; and a motley crew that includes the neighborhood's favorite ex-beverage salesman, "Juice" Terry.
In the world of Porno, however, even the cons are conned. Sick Boy and Renton jockey for top dog. The out-of-jail and in-for-revenge Begbie is on the loose. But it's the hapless, drug-addled Spud who may be spreading the most trouble.
Porno is a novel about the Trainspotting crew ten years further down the line: still scheming, still scamming, still fighting for the first-class seats as the train careens at high velocity with derailment looming around the next corner.
Evening Standard [London]
A worthy sequel.... Charming, funny and sly, Porno is a good poke at all kinds of pretence and moral tidiness.— Melanie McGrathMelanie McGrath - Evening Standard [London]
“A worthy sequel.... Charming, funny and sly, Porno is a good poke at all kinds of pretence and moral tidiness.”The New Yorker
In a wily "Big Chill" maneuver, Welsh brings back the cast of his iconic first novel, "Trainspotting," for a serially narrated Edinburgh reunion, but, though ten years have passed, none of these seedy characters have grown up at all. When pimping and pub proprietorship become a bore, Sick Boy and Renton turn their energies to the production of a porn film entitled "Seven Rides for Seven Brothers," in which they and their nearest and dearest play starring roles. Brawling, bonking, and Scots brogue aside, there's room for some solid satire -- of gentrification, globalization, and the hypocrisy of Britain's Labour Government. Surprisingly, the book's most convincing voice is that of its only female narrator, an ambitious Sick Girl, who takes on each man and somehow comes out a winner.Kevin Greenberg
After a few notable letdowns, Welsh springs back with a sequel to Trainspotting that recaptures some of the vitriol of its predecessor. Porno picks up ten years after Trainspotting ends, with Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson returning to his Scottish hometown in a half-hearted attempt to make good. Having traded in heroin addiction for occasional crack use, Sick Boy is seeking to revamp his image, but not before indulging in a final scam: making a porno film. With the help of a confused coed, Sick Boy will reunite the Trainspotting lads for one more go at the big time. A master of misanthropic humor, Welsh shows as much style and wit as ever. As he has in past novels, the author writes many chapters in the thick brogue of his working-class characters. It's a disorienting argot that at its most effective is almost musical. The book delivers what you would expect from a sequel to Trainspotting: more grime, more desperation, more violence and more black humor. But the book also finds Welsh striving for, and achieving, something more mature. Things here are only funny on the surface. These bruised-up characters become more complicated and sympathetic as the situations they find themselves in dissolve into tragedy.From The Critics
After a few notable letdowns, Welsh springs back with a sequel to Trainspotting that recaptures some of the vitriol of its predecessor. Porno picks up ten years after Trainspotting ends, with Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson returning to his Scottish hometown in a half-hearted attempt to make good. Having traded in heroin addiction for occasional crack use, Sick Boy is seeking to revamp his image, but not before indulging in a final scam: making a porno film. With the help of a confused coed, Sick Boy will reunite the Trainspotting lads for one more go at the big time. A master of misanthropic humor, Welsh shows as much style and wit as ever. As he has in past novels, the author writes many chapters in the thick brogue of his working-class characters. It's a disorienting argot that at its most effective is almost musical. The book delivers what you would expect from a sequel to Trainspotting : more grime, more desperation, more violence and more black humor. But the book also finds Welsh striving for, and achieving, something more mature. Things here are only funny on the surface. These bruised-up characters become more complicated and sympathetic as the situations they find themselves in dissolve into tragedy. Author—Kevin GreenbergPublishers Weekly
The Trainspotting gang returns in a sequel to Welsh's cult novel, this time trying to scheme their way into the annals of adult entertainment. Ten years older, but criminally irresponsible as ever, Sick Boy, Renton, Begbie and Spud are still focusing on illicit drugs and seedy sex. Budding entrepreneur Sick Boy or Simon, as he prefers to be called now comes up with the brilliant idea of starting a porno flick company in Edinburgh, and hunts down Renton in Amsterdam, where his former friend owns a nightclub. With the help of Nikki Fuller-Smith, a ravishing and frustrated undergraduate film student and part-time sex worker aching for fame, the two begin filming and marketing their first movie, making it all the way to the top of the industry before the inevitable crash. Meanwhile, homicidal Begbie and pathetic Spud lurk in the background, waiting to crash the party. To boost the hormonal rush of the narrative, Welsh tells the story from different points of view, the thickness of the dialect varying convincingly from voice to voice (English Nikki quotes from Middlemarch, while the nearly incomprehensible Begbie says things like "Ah lits um go tae git the bat wi baith hands"). As has been noted many times, Welsh has an uncanny talent for dialogue, and his writing is often diamond sharp (a sexual encounter is described as "raging bull and mad cow get on board the love boat"). If this follow-up feels less urgent than the original, it is no reflection on Welsh, but rather on the growing familiarity of the terrain he has so inimitably staked out. 10-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Those lads from Edinburgh are at it again. Yes, almost six years after Welsh's wildly popular Trainspotting appeared here, his characters return in Porno after playing subsidiary roles in last year's thick Glue. Here, things are looking up for Simon David Williamson ("Sick Boy"), who has inherited a pub in his native Edinburgh. He's also ready to break into the movies, specifically that branch identified as the "adult entertainment industry." For this purpose, he enlists the aid of Nicola Fuller-Smith, hoping that her hyphen will give a touch of class to the work-in-progress titled Seven Rides for Seven Brothers. The big issue is whether Simon will meet the psychotic Begbie, to whom he mails unsolicited gay porn in jail. Welsh's ear for dialectdoesn't fail him in this worthy successor, and his fans won't be disappointed. Dust off those Scottish-English dictionaries. For all larger public libraries.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
The Trainspotting boys are back and not a whit wiser for the decade that’s passed.Welsh (Glue, 2001, etc.) knows what a good thing he had with Trainspotting and thought it might be a laugh to see what happened to the pack of Scottish junkies and grifters ten years later, letting them narrate their stories in turn. The focus of this overstuffed comic sequel is Sick Boy, who’s still pulling scams, only with more aplomb. He’s got two primary ones going: renovating an old pub (though the longer he’s into that one, the more legit it seems to get) and directing a porn film with some friends. Renton, who made off with his money years before, is now running a club in Amsterdam and seems to be settling into a pre–middle-age sloth. Begbie is still a psychotic font of rage and invective who’s come out of jail a little earlier than most people thought and is looking for someone to take revenge on. Spud shows up every now and again, a sad portrait of a lifelong junkie hanging on to life only by some cruel joke of the cosmos. Into this boys’ club comes Nikki, a student with a taste for self-degradation who gets involved with Sick Boy and, concurrently, his film. She’s a fascinating figure in that, unlike the rest of these random elements, Welsh actually seems to have taken the time to try to figure out what makes this damaged and self-hating person tick. Sick Boy makes for good reading, as his amoral self sizes up and then dispenses with everyone who crosses his path, always finding the angles. Begbie foams at the mouth in an almost unreadable Scottish patois, while Renton doesn’t add much to the story—and the less said about Spud the better.
Flush with bile, bitter humor, drugs, and sex: a funfew hundred pages spent with the worst that humanity has to offer.
From the Publisher
“The poet laureate of the chemical generation.” -- The Face“Welsh writes with a skill, wit and compassion that amounts to genius. He is the best thing that has happened to British writing for decades.” -- Sunday Times
“A pure writer, producing staggering feats of storytelling… the skill of a master.” -- Independent
