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In this sequel to the iconic Trainspotting, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie are back, as they search for love, self, and meaning in this brilliantly comic new novel by Irvine Welsh.
Choose life. Choose love? The Trainspotting crew fall for rave and romance in Irvine Welsh's blazing new novel.
It is the late 1980s, the closing years of an era. A brand-new one is starting. For the Trainspotting crew, this new door is opening—a time for hope, for love, for raving.
Leaving heroin behind—and separated after a drug deal gone wrong—Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex, romance, and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption.
Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his "princess"—rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees a chance for his generation to take control at last.
But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group's dreams or just another doomed quest?
"Welsh's characters prove vital after 33 years." —Publishers Weekly
"Welsh's affection for his characters is clear, and his grasp of boyish humor remains intact, but five novels in, he's drained this series of novelty. A logorrheic recycling of bad-boy tropes." —Kirkus Reviews
"Welsh's writing is funny, percussive, and breathtaking; he uses Scottish dialect to marvelous effect. Echoing D. H. Lawrence's exploration of love and culture in Women in Love, Welsh chronicles sex and class during Britain's late Thatcher years, viewed from the perspective of damaged yet searching men. It is a marvel of energy, characterization, and evocation of place." —Library Journal
"Welsh revisits the characters that first electrified readers 33 years ago, but here he trades youthful nihilism for the raw, uneasy terrain of intimacy. Welsh's prose remains propulsive—dialect-rich, profane, and darkly comic—yet there is a surprising tenderness beneath the bravado. Welsh refuses to sentimentalize his characters; instead, he exposes their fear of ordinariness and their hunger for connection, asking whether men raised on detachment and deflection can learn to risk sincerity, and whether love, like recovery, requires a reckoning with the self." —Booklist
"The arrival of Trainspotting was an earth-shaking cultural moment and it had a huge influence on me. It shines with humor and friendship. Every character here is alive." ―Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo
This information about Men in Love was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Irvine Welsh was born in the great city of Edinburgh, Scotland. His family moved from their tenement home in Leith, to the prefabs in West Pilton, and then onto Muirhouse's maisonette flats.
Welsh left Ainslie Park Secondary School when he was sixteen and had various jobs but did not really like work any more than he did school. Welsh eventually returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot Watt University.
In Edinburgh, Welsh started to write. Digging out some old diaries, Welsh did a draft of what would become Trainspotting. Welsh published parts of this from 1991 onwards in DOG, the West Coast Magazine, and New Writing Scotland.
When Trainspotting was published in 1993, Welsh shot to fame. Despite ...
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