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Skagboys

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Raw, gritty prequel to Trainspotting's drug-fueled saga.

If you've ventured through the grimy alleyways of Trainspotting and craved more, "Skagboys" brings you the genesis of those unforgettable characters. Meet Mark Renton and his mates before they fully descended into Edinburgh's heroin abyss. Irvine Welsh serves an unflinching prequel that's as much about the zeitgeist of the 1980s as it is about the characters' harrowing choices. It's Welsh at his visceral, provocative best – a must-read for anyone who finds beauty in the darkest corners of human experience.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
New

Skagboys

Regular price $3.90
Unit price
per
ISBN: 9780099535584
Authors: Irvine Welsh
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date of Publication: 2013-05-06
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Drama, Contemporary, Mystery/Crime/Thriller
Related Topics: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
Goodreads rating: 4.04
(rated by 16187 readers)

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Description

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
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Similar Reads

Raw, gritty prequel to Trainspotting's drug-fueled saga.

If you've ventured through the grimy alleyways of Trainspotting and craved more, "Skagboys" brings you the genesis of those unforgettable characters. Meet Mark Renton and his mates before they fully descended into Edinburgh's heroin abyss. Irvine Welsh serves an unflinching prequel that's as much about the zeitgeist of the 1980s as it is about the characters' harrowing choices. It's Welsh at his visceral, provocative best – a must-read for anyone who finds beauty in the darkest corners of human experience.

Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.