Dans l’Édimbourg des années 1980, Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud et Tommy essayent de se serrer les coudes. Unis par leur amitié fragile et leur addiction à l’héroïne, ils tentent d’échapper à l’ennui oppressant et à la brutalité de leur quotidien dans la cité : ils volent, arnaquent et prennent de la drogue. Pourtant, au cœur du désespoir, surnage une envie de vivre plus forte que tout le reste.
Terry le don Juan, Billy le boxeur, Cul le DJ et Gally la poisse : quatre jeunes garçons de la banlieue d'Edimbourg, quatre enfants de la bagarre et de la misère. Des années 1970 à aujourd'hui, soudés par une indéfectible amitié, ils traversent une succession d'explosions sociales et culturelles : thatchérisme, révolution punk, ecstasy. Et une seule idée en tête : ne pas devenir des laissés-pour-compte.
Retour à la case départ. Après des années de galère, Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy et Spud se retrouvent dans le huis clos froid et pluvieux d'Édimbourg. Le crack, la misère et les coups foireux sont au rendez-vous, mais la rage de vivre demeure. Avec Nikki, une étudiante invraisemblablement belle et hantée par l'idée de vieillir, ils décident de s'en sortir en produisant... le porno du siècle !
Oliver, an orphan in London's perilous streets, struggles against poverty and joins a relentless criminal gang. Dickens vividly depicts the city's underworld, highlighting the plight of thieves and homeless children while giving a voice to the disadvantaged and abused.
Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. 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 family starts to fracture, Mark's life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas. The way out is heroin. It's no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence - the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all. Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred - but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.
These two blackly humorous screenplays are both set in Edinburgh. "Trainspotting" is based on Irvine Welch's novel about heroin addicts and the underbelly of Edinburgh life. In "Shallow Grave" three young people discover a dead body and a suitcase full of money in their flat.
*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* Mark Renton is finally a success. 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. He's then rocked by a chance encounter with Frank Begbie, from whom he'd been hiding for years after a terrible betrayal and the resulting debt. But the psychotic Begbie appears to have reinvented himself as a celebrated artist and - much to Mark's astonishment - doesn't seem interested in revenge. Sick Boy and Spud, who have agendas of their own, are intrigued to learn that their old friends are back in town, but when they enter the bleak world of organ-harvesting, things start to go so badly wrong. Lurching from crisis to crisis, the four men circle each other, driven by their personal histories and addictions, confused, angry - so desperate that even Hibs winning the Scottish Cup doesn't really help. One of these four will not survive to the end of this book. Which one of them is wearing Dead Men's Trousers? Fast and furious, scabrously funny and weirdly moving, this is a spectacular return of the crew from Trainspotting.
DS Bruce Robertson is planning on kicking his festive season off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam, but it starts off quite badly, with a missing wife, a cocaine habit, a deterioration in his genital health, and a messy murder to solve. By the author of TRAINSPOTTING.
