Skagboys

By: Irvine Welsh

Narrated by: Tam Dean Burn

Prequel to the best-selling phenomenon Trainspotting, this exhilarating and moving novel shows how Welsh’s colorful miscreants first went wrong.

Marked by Irvine Welsh’s scabrous humor and raw Scottish vernacular, Skagboys transports us to 1980s Edinburgh, where the Trainspotting crew is just getting started. Mark Renton has it all: the first in his family to attend university, he has a pretty girlfriend and a great social life. But when economic uncertainties and family problems intervene, Rent succumbs to the defeatism - not to mention the drug use - that has taken hold in Edinburgh’s tougher quarters. His friends are responding according to personality. Laid off, Spud Murphy is paralyzed in the face of long-term unemployment. Sick Boy, supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, is scamming and hustling for money and drugs. And meanwhile, psycho Franco Begbie is scaring the hell out of everyone. Darkly humorous, Skagboys gives a gritty and gripping portrait of a time, not unlike ours, when money was scarce, unemployment was high, and drugs seemed the answer.

©2012 Irvine Welsh (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Keeping friends close but your enemies.....

Listening to this made me feel like I was listening to a night out that I'd missed. Having someone tell me a story about the classic mistakes my pals were doomed to make. All along thinking how did I not see that coming ?

Boys will be boys…

Fantastic prequel to the exploits detailed in Trainspotting. Thrilling, expressive narration from Tam Dean Burn. Why hasn’t this been adapted for film yet?

The performance alone made this a great listen

As always, Irvine Welsh hits it out of the park. This is the first of his books that I've listened to (read the others). The characters came to life in all their LLieth glory under Tan Dean Burn's masterful narration. I'm sad it's over but now I'm psyched to go see T2!

Bally

Holy hell what a ride like. Laugh, cry, gawp and laugh some meyr as ye contemplate the human condition

If you like heroin, you'll like this book

If you like heroin, you'll like Skagboys. It covers all the key aspects of life as a junkie, no matter where you're from

Unbelievable!!

The best audio book I've ever heard. Amazing narration!! A must read! I love it.

More time with the lads

Skagboys spends more time with the lads with whom you'd never want to spend time. There's not story or plot to speak of. Like Trainspotting, this is one day-in-the-life short story after another; most being entirely unconnected. As with anything which may as well be an anthology, there are highlights and lowlights. The rehab sequence was interminable but there are also the riveting, disgusting, heart wrenching, banal, and of course nihilistic.

The characters, and narration of each, are surprisingly distinct. Most chapters don't directly tell you who its about but the language and the voices mean you almost never have to guess. Welsh, if nothing else, writes strong complex unique characters.

Same narrator as Trainspotting with the same uncanny results. I would never read these books on page. This is the way it was meant to be.

So much Trainspotting

The prequel to the epic Trainspotting saga, which is now... at least five books now by my count?

That's a lot of stories about these guys, from the groundbreaking 90s novel which at the time felt like a perfect one-off. Author Irvine Welsh has been drawing from that well for a long long while, and he does it extremely well, but it's hard to say if this book feels necessary or not.

It is more explicitly political than the original, directly blaming Thatcher for the economic conditions which led to rampant drug addiction in Scotland in the 80s. It starts off with Renton in college, and ends with many scenes taking place in rehab. The novel still mostly structured like a series of interconnected short stories, some of them as grotesque yet hilarious as only Welsh could write.

Psycho Franco, manipulative pimp Sick Boy, and poor well-meaning loser Spud; they're all there with deeper dives into what makes the characters tick. If you want more of these characters, you will very much get it.

Welsh's novels tend to reference each other, and it's a must-read in that sense, but doesn't quite have the power and timelessness of Trainspotting. I'd still only recommend that one to fans of the film. Skagboys is also better than the first sequel Porno, a lot better than Franco's solo excursion Blade Artist, but perhaps not as good a read as the finale Dead Men's Trousers.

If this was its own book, its own thing that came out without any others and without expectations, it could be a masterpiece of junkie drama. Yet, comparisons can't be avoided, so this is mainly for the devoted fans at this point.

Keep 's me wanting more.

Takes five minutes to get into the Scottish, but when I finished it, I instantly bought Trainspotting to stay in the atmosphere.

Great book

I read trainspotters before reading this book and I would have to say this book is a bit more graphic in its scenes but good overall.