Skagboys

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking with a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain. 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.

Mark Renton has it all: he's good-looking with a place at university. But there's no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher's government is destroying working-class communities across Britain. 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.

Both a prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, and an alternative version of it, Skagboys is Irvine Welsh's greatest work.

Mark Renton seems to have it all: he's the first in his family to go to university, he's young, has a pretty girlfriend and a great social life. But 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 badly handicapped younger brother dies the family bonds start to weaken, his life flips out of control, and he succumbs to the defeatism and the heroin which has taken hold in Edinburgh's grimmer areas.

His friends face similar challenges. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job and faces long-term unemployment, while Tommy Lawrence feels that only love can save him from being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence -- exemplified respectively by the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. And then there is Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, scamming and hustling his way through life.

Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: not the sanitized version, of upbeat pop music, mullets, shoulder-pads and MTV, but a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred -- 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.

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.

"Welsh's descriptive style is masterful - crude, violent and poetic by turns - but it is dialogue for which he has the Midas touch... Its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page. A film, one suspects, isn't far off." -- Arifa Akbar Independent "The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent." The Times "I'm not sure that in 2012 there will be a single novel, never mind half a dozen, with more verve or nous or life in it than Skagboys. Ye kin pure tell they Booker gadgies'll no huv the baws but." -- Anthony Cummins Literary Review "I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction." -- D J Taylor Spectator "Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that's the most compelling story." -- Joanna McGarry Stylist

Tempted		1	(106)
Prologue: Notes From Rehab Journal (Concerning Orgreave)
I Did What I Did
Blackpool
Notes on an Epidemic I
Too Shy
First Shot: Just Say `Aye'
Family Planning
Way of the Dragon
Held Out
Dutch Elm
Falling		107	(58)
InterRail
Misery Loves Bedfellows
Funeral Pyre
Notes on an Epidemic 2
Love Cats
Freedom
Notes on an Epidemic 3
It Never Rains...
Same Again
Cold		165	(70)
Union Street
Baltic Street
Heavenly Dancer
Supply Side Economics
A Mature Student
House Guests
The Hoochie Connection
Skaggirl
Notes on an Epidemic 4
The Light Hurt His Eyes
Thawing		235	(86)
Seventh Floor
Bad Circulation
Northern Soul Classics
Dirty Dicks
Hogmanay
Notes on an Epidemic 5
The Art of Conversation
Skin and Bone
The Chute
Waters of Leith
Ocean		321	(52)
Sea Dogs (1. Customs and Excise
2. Reasonable Duties
3. Car Deck)
Nash Stoorie Bomb
The High Seas
Desertion
Junk Dilemmas No. 1
Towers of London
Wound Botulism
Drought		373
Junk Dilemmas No. 2
Notes on an Epidemic 6
A Safe Port
Junk Dilemmas No. 3
St Monans (Peer Education)
The Cusp
The Rehab Diaries
Avanti
Chasing Brown
In Business
Junk Dilemmas No. 4
Soft Cell
Notes on an Epidemic 7
Trainspotting at Gorgie Central

Irvine Welsh is the author of seven previous novels and four books of shorter fiction. He currently lives in Chicago.

A prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting, this is Irvine Welsh's greatest work and where it all went wrong for the boys...