Dead Men's Trousers

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He added that "by the end, what could've been a fitting, apt, even startling counterweight to Trainspotting has been weighed down with so much awkward sex, so many grown men on drugs and so many antic, unlikely capers, that the great idea Welsh had at the beginning has been lost".

An international jet-setter, he now makes significant money managing DJs, but the constant travel, airport lounges, soulless hotel rooms and broken relationships have left him dissatisfied with his life. For example, there's an excellent chapter about Sick Boy's brother-in-law who is goaded into a shocking moment in which he destroys his family after his drinks are spiked with MDMA on Christmas. Dead man’s trousers begins in 2015, with Renton, now a successful DJ Manager, when he encounters Begbie (now a big time artist in LA, with a beautiful wife and two kids) on a transatlantic flight.Perhaps he can settle down now that he does not need to check the rear view mirror for Begbie and the glint of a knife. Dead Men's Trousers feels like a mad dash through a pre-determined series of events rather than the exploration of character, circumstance and setting which astute readers and fans of the original might be seeking. It is these three characters that really make the book an enjoyable ride, and a fitting conclusion to one of the greatest literary saga I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Welsh makes these amoral misadventures so propulsive, so joyfully awful, that you have to go with the flow…this roues’ romp is about as much fun as you can have between two book covers. The more things change with these boys, the more they stay the same and the running theme of betrayal is ever present – it’s as though they simply cannot get ahead without it being at the expense of a mate.

The characters stitch one another up, take revenge, bond again in a burst of drunken sentimentality – and rinse and repeat. He rolled on, through paragraph after paragraph of purplish prose about the horrors of war, until he was, eventually, interrupted by the woman at the other end of the phone. Pochi libri hanno a che fare con il piacere di leggere (del tutto personale) come quelli di questa saga; mi ritrovo a girare le pagine con un ghigno beffardo, mi vien da credere che più di me si sia divertito solo il loro autore a scriverli. The tension was unreal, and when it finally happened I cried like a big embarrassment for about forty minutes.

Title Drop: Mark notes that people are nothing but a work in progress until we die and fall into the world of dead men's trousers.

Working-class people seldom get that the wealthy generally eat, sleep and travel well at their expense again, through tax deductables. Having grown with the characters in Trainspotting, Porno and Skagboys (Blade Artist too), on the surface Welsh has created some of the greatest 2-dimensional male characters in literature; however, over time, he has had the courage to show the heart of these (darkest) characters.

Irvine Welsh is also known for writing in his native Edinburgh Scots dialect, making his prose challenging for the average reader unfamiliar with this style. In contrast Spud, the best hearted of all the characters, has sunk to what he himself would consider a nadir, but the organ-harvesting sub-plot takes him a couple of stages even further down. Nonetheless, his immature selfishness is getting somewhat tedious at this point, and is nowhere near as amusing as Begbie’s mutated psychopathy, Sick Boy’s towering bastardry, and Spud’s endearing daftness. The novel also features several cameo appearances from characters from the previous novels including Mikey Forrester and the hilarious Juice Terry.

With at least two of the main characters comfortably sorted and sharing a rather saccharine 'happy ever after' ending, is this the end for the Trainspotting cast? The evolution of Renton and Sick Boy's characters follows on from the previous installments in a believable and relatable way. Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Sick Boy unsuccessfully argues that a woman can't be a nonce when trying to set a sex worker up with his underage nephew. It is the fourth book with the Mark Renton character as the leading man and Sick Boy, Spud Murphy and Francis Begbie in important supporting turns.In their last encounter Begbie disappeared under the wheels of a car while en route to take bloody revenge on Mark for ripping him off at the end of Trainspotting. Ma non solo i quattro protagonisti appaiono invecchiati in modo più o meno consapevole ( … più invecchi e più è dura combattere contro la tua sgradevolezza sociale, si diventa più facili alle esplosioni di emotività narcisa); anche lo stesso Welsh, per quanto si ingegni ad inventare nuove “avventure” sempre più sordide, perfide e scellerate, sconta il passare degli anni così che questo romanzo risulta troppo lungo, in alcune parti annoia e, duole ammetterlo, mostra una ripetitività che compromette gran parte della partecipazione che gli episodi precedenti suscitavano. Begbie is now a famous artist ( the book takes off from where Blade Artist left us and not the film T2 which has Begbie in jail and still very short tempered.