Best 1993 Adventures (6)

By: Joshua Glenn
July 7, 2020

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1993 adventure novels.

Irvine Welsh’s druggy picaresque Trainspotting.

An interrelated collection of stories about Mark “Rent Boy” Renton, Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson, Daniel “Spud” Murphy, Francis “Franco” Begbie, and their whole sick crew of drug-abusing Edinburghers. Set in the mid-1980s, and narrated in thick Scots dialect and slang, Trainspotting paints a vivid portrait of the sorts of trouble into which young men without opportunities can get themselves. We observe them scoring heroin, enjoying heroin, and attempting to quit heroin. We tour the insides of Renton’s head (guilt-ridden, selfish), Sick Boy’s head (self-glorifying, nihilistic). A baby dies; a friend becomes an addict; Renton sleeps with an underage girl; Sick Boy kills a dog. There’s a bar fight, a job interview, another bar fight. Begbie emerges as a terrifying thug. (“The problem is, he’s a mate n aw,” muses Renton. “What kin ye dae?”) Some of the most memorable, amusing, horrifying scenes are scatalogical: Renton is caught short, uses the most disgusting pub toilet imaginable, then must rescue the opium suppositories he’s shit out; another friend wakes up in puddle of shit and vomit, then inadvertently spatters his girlfriend’s family with it. It’s all very sordid, and in the end none of the characters — except Spud? — are sympathetic. But the language is glorious, and Renton’s insights into the banality of normal life are acute.

Fun facts: An enjoyable film adaptation, directed by Danny Boyle, was released in 1996. Starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, and Ewen Bremner, it has been named of the best British films of all time. Characters from the novel appear in subsequent Welsh novels and collections, including Glue (2001), Porno (2002), and Skagboys (2012).

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Best 1993 Adventures (6)

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