The Acid House (Paperback, Reissue)

A collection of 21 stories and one novella - Welsh's second book, but his first published stateside - that will inevitably be compared to last year's Booker winner, James Kelman. The Scottish dialect, the urban lowlife characters, and the vulgar slang all make a similar claim to authenticity. Welsh's punters prowl the streets of Edinburgh, not Kelman's Glasgow, a distinction likely to be lost on most American readers. In any case, not all of his mean and grungy stories rely on a thick Scottish brogue, though a number of casual pieces are one-joke gimmicks. In the sci-fi-ish "Vat '96," a head is kept alive in a jar while "his" wife entertains men in his presence; for "Where the Debris Meets the Sea," four Hollywood glamour girls sit poolside and comment on the bodies of working-class men. Such simple reversal is at the center of the title story, in which a newborn and a teenaged acid head exchange bodies in a freak lightning storm. Welsh's best stories, including the novella, "A Smart Cunt," are mostly days-in-the-lives of aimless, drug-addled fellows who live for sex, football, and violence (often in combination). In "Eurotrash," the narrator goes to Amsterdam to kick his habit, and has an affair with a "repulsive and ugly" woman who turns out to be a transsexual. "Granny's Old Junk" packs a clever punch when it's revealed that the little old lady who's about to be ripped off by her junky grandson is a longtime user herself. Such brutal ironies come easily to Welsh, as does a nihilism that seems designed for effect. In "The Last Resort on the Adriatic," a ten-year grieving widower joins his wife in a shipside suicide; and the video-obsessed drudge in "Snuff," having seen every film in his guide, records his own suicide on videotape. Welsh often settles for shock value, sleazy sex, and heroin chic, but he's actually a better writer than many who've been here before, especially Burroughs and his epigones. (Kirkus Reviews)

After his spectacular and controversial debut, Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh - the most dangerous new writer in Scotland - follows with an unsettling, shocking and very funny collection of stories. The characters in this extraordinary book are often - on the surface- depraved, vicious, cowardly and manipulative, but their essential humanity is never undermined. Using a range of approaches, from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh displays a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of observation, confronting our perception of our own identities and that of those around us.

General

Imprint:	Vintage
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	April 1995
First published:	2010
Authors:	Irvine Welsh
Dimensions:	199 x 131 x 20mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	289
Edition:	Reissue
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-943501-3
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-09-943501-2
Barcode:	9780099435013

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