Glue

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Touching!
Review: "Glue" is Welsh's best since "Trainspotting." I have loved all of his books (even if "Filth" was a Scottish version of "The Bad Lieutenant"). This time, there's no wacky parasite running down the middle of a page declaring its hunger, no wacky type face or font putting you in the frame of mind of the user. "Glue" is the straightforward tale of four boys growing up in the schemes (projects) of Edinburgh. Their friendship tries to survive the test of time as their lives take different paths. There's Juice-Terry, the womanizer of the group; Carl Ewart, record collector who becomes a world class DJ: Billy Birrell, the boxer; and Andrew Galloway, whose life takes many tragic turns. Welsh once again displays his gift with language. A lot of readers complain about his use of Scottish dialect, but after you've read his other books it becomes quite easy to read. This book features his most sympathetic characters to date; in fact I found myself getting teary-eyed in many scenes because I did not want bad things to happen to them. But of course this is Irvine Welsh's world, so bad things happen to them all. There are great set pieces (such as the entire Oktoberfest in which they befriend German ravers), plenty of drugs, and plenty of shagging. God, I did not want this book to end. There are even cameos from the lads of "Trainspotting" which take place before and after that landmark work. If you are a Welsh fan, you will love this...

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: "Glue" was my first Welsh experience. I have seen the film "Trainspotting," but have yet to read the text.

"Glue" is a wonderful story for those who appreciate the struggles and the work involved in solidifying good friendships. The book hit a personal note within myself and should do with those who know what it's like to grow up with two or more very close friends.

I would rather not dive into any descriptive detail about the book, as I would recommend going into it blindly the same way I did. Just know that it has all the elements: the comedy, the tragedy, the drama, the humour, the violence, the sex, etc. It's quite a wild ride, like many of us have had ourselves.

Rating:
Summary: Welsh gets serious
Review: Although "Glue" contains lots of the sex, drugs, and violence that can be found in other Irvine Welsh books like "Filth" and "Trainspotting," it also finds Welsh seemingly trying to inject some more meaning into his writing. And for the most part, it's successful. The book follows four friends, Billy, Gally, Terry, and Carl, at ten-year intervals from their childhoods in the Edinburgh projects to their mid-thirties. With all four men getting a turn to narrate and some third-person narration as well, Welsh gives us a look inside the heads of each one, and we get to see how they're shaped by their working-class urban background. Welsh has a knack for crafting believable characters who are flawed but sympathetic, and "Glue" is no exception.

As "Glue" wears on and Billy, Gally, Terry, and Carl get older, their lives become more difficult and complicated. As teenagers, they're preoccupied with little more than getting girls into bed and taking part in soccer riots. By the book's conclusion, they've had to confront the realities of adulthood: changing social mores, marriage, kids, jobs, drugs, crime, street morality, death, and more. And although the four men are joined by the bonds of friendship, Welsh also gives the reader an idea of the often complex and self-serving nature of these relationships. I think what Welsh was essentially going for was an examination of how life's complexity and ambiguity only grows as people get older, and he nails it.

Of course, it wouldn't be an Irvine Welsh novel without loads of profanity and graphic prose, and there's enough of that here to keep just about anyone entertained. Much like a Chuck Palahniuk novel, "Glue" is full of set pieces that are both revolting and hilarious at the same time (Terry's partner in crime getting covered in excrement is one prominent example). But at more than 450 pages covering a thirty-year period, "Glue" also aims to be more epic in scope than the typical Welsh or Palahniuk book. I don't like this book as much as the utterly hysterical "Filth," but it's nice to see Welsh trying to add some more nuance and meaning to his work.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Ever since the 'Trainspotting' movie brought Welsh to the broad attention of Americans, including me, I for some reason thought of him as a flash-in-the-pan talent, someone who got away with writing about 'real life,' using the rankness of his subject matter as an excuse for poor style. This was probably due to the fact that all of his books were on similiar topics - Scottish heroin addicts, Scottish football hooligans, Scottish heroin addicts who are also football hooligans...

Of course, I couldn't have been more wrong. When I finally decided to give 'Glue' a try, I had a new favorite author within days. It starts out solidly, then really takes off with the chapters in first person describing the adolescences of the main characters. All four of them are entirely believable, engaging and likeable, in different ways, and their points of view contribute to a general understanding of the society around them. Welsh's command of dialect, though, which seemed like a cheap gimmick to me before, is his real brilliance, and the humor - ranging from satire to jokes made by the characters to outright slapstick - is hysterical. It got so that my roommate had to go out whenever I started reading, as I had no choice but to read out loud, in my horrible put-on Scottish accent, and break down laughing every several pages. One character in particular, Carl Ewart, is brilliant, the kind of guy you'd like to know in real life, and it's no wonder Welsh uses his voice to describe one of the longest episodes. The novel does lose some momentum when it switches out of first person for the later half, and a load of new characters are suddenly introduced, but it survives; the new characters are interesting as well, and the shift seem justified by the direction of the plot. Some sections do seem a little contrived, in a sort of Dickensian way - we have to find out what happened to everyone who appeared in the first part, characters are referenced needlessly by other characters in conversation to remind the reader that they exist - but it does seem Dickensian, more of a throwback to classic literature than a weakness on the author's part. As for the accusation that I would have leveled at Welsh before, that all his books are the same - a lot of people have pointed out already that this is a novel about friendship, while Trainspotting is basically a novel about heroin. It's true, it does feature Renton's moral dilemma regarding ripping off his mates, but it has a lot more insight on the issue of drug use, while this novel deals as profoundly with human relationships over time.

Rating:
Summary: "The worst has already happened, the rest is just details"
Review: GLUE is a hard-hitting, frank, and often violent recount of the friendship between four boys growing up in Edinburgh's economically depressed scheme. The reader is taken on a wild ride as Juice Terry Lawson, Carl Ewart, Billy Birrell, and Andrew Galloway engage in such youthful acts as football hooliganism, street fighting, excessive drinking and drugging, shagging (getting your hole), and incessant encounters with the police. Meanwhile, their life at home is often less than satisfactory as they have to deal with divorce, joblessness, and emotional neglect. Relations between the four friends transform as decades pass and circumstances change, but they are never able to let go of the past. Each character must confront their past if their friendship is to survive into the new millennium.

Irvine Welsh performs an admirable task of developing characters that are both believable and three-dimensional. Each character comes alive on the page. Additionally, the bonds of friendship between the four characters are not portrayed in a simplistic feel-good manner. Although they might have been friends since childhood, they do have their grievances and anger with each other. Relations aren't always perfect between them resulting in this novel's greatest strength.

GLUE is written in Welsh's signature style of working-class Scottish dialogue, which makes the experience of reading this novel very rich and animated. If you are familiar with TRAINSPOTTING than GLUE will be familiar in its form and context. There are even cameo references to the characters and plot of TRAINSPOTTING in this book. My only complaint with GLUE refers to the torture killing of the guard dogs occurring in the first part of this book. I was repulsed by the gruesome details and I strongly wonder about the merit of including this scene at all. This must be an attempt by Irvine Welsh to push the literary boundaries. Regardless, GLUE is a novel written from the imagination of Irvine Welsh and therefore is sure to entertain those readers wanting a unique reading experience.

Rating:
Summary: Buttons unpushed
Review: I still don't know if I like Irvine Welsh. Marabou Stork Nightmares and Acid House were remarkable and disturbing. Filth was perhaps one of the most difficult books I've forced my way through, yet afterwards I was intrigued at how the character of Robertson could generate such a negative emotional response. So though I'm not sure I like reading Welsh, the man certainly know how to press my buttons; I guess that's why I keep going back.

Glue left my emotions unruffled and my expectations unfulfilled.

I don't think the story is at fault. Glue is a very well considered novel. The point-of-view style of the narrative is quite effective. It's fun watching different characters view the same situations differently and thus spin their experiences in the way most sympathetic to them, often hilariously. The characters likewise tend to be true to themselves. Welsh has a good grasp of these four and nothing that they do or the things that happen to them seems contrived (for the most part). The dialogue, always Welsh's long suit, is again at the forefront.

However, Welsh definitely needed an editorial hand in this one. Sections of the book seem to drag, particularly the Munich beer festival and the night on the town with an American rock and roll diva past the apex of her career (and an utterly pointless insertion into the lives of the characters). Welsh is best when at his most terse and direct. The rapid pace and numerous changes of most of his past novels would have been a welcome addition to Glue as well.

But even worse then the pacing is the fact that no emotional response was generated from Gally, Billy, Carl and Terry. I kept waiting for the moment where I really cared about their lives, and what ultimately happened to them. That's what I always count on Welsh to do - to push my buttons and get then response, good or bad. This time, it didn't happen.

Rating:
Summary: The joy and the agony of friendship
Review: I was a big fan of Welsh in his previous novels. I truly thought him as the talent many claimed him to be. I didn't enjoy Filth much, but this Glue needs some cohesiveness. It's as if the author figured if he called the novel glue it would miraculously happen in the content of the book. This is my third attempt to read this book. I again gave up. This feels more like an anthropological text then a novel. I get a lot of background, the hows and whys these people do the things they do. But he doesn't give me a reason to be interested in this world. I hope he goes back to his old self in his next novel.

Rating:
Summary: The flipside of "Trainspotting"
Review: Irvine Welsh's "Glue" may be read as the flipside to his earlier, and much more compelling novel, "Trainspotting." Whereas in "Trainspotting" four friends are driven apart by forces such as drugs and a parasitic lifestyle that threaten to submerge their individuality, in "Glue" another set of four friends discover, following the suicide of one of their member, the importance of friendship (the "glue" of the title) in the face of similar forces. When familiar faces from the earlier book appear in "Glue," they are treated with suspicion or outright disdain. Mark Renton, the hero of "Trainspotting," is known to Gally, Terry, Billy, and Carl, the heroes of "Glue," simply as the boy who betrayed his mates. The idea is an interesting one, and Welsh makes sure that we come to know his heroes well. But this time the ideas, and even the language, seem less fresh. As in "Trainspotting," the bulk of the novel, which is set primarily in Edinburgh, is written in Scottish dialect, and Welsh is a master of this form. But, after having painstakingly developed his thesis in the first two-thirds of the book, he mostly abandons the vernacular language for a rather flat Brit English prose in the final third. Even worse, subplots that are brought in to flesh out the narrative don't really mesh, especially the one involving an unconvincing friendship that develops between the priapic Juice Terry and an aging American pop star. Nevertheless, "Glue" offers a handful of genuine laughs, and some memorable characterizations, as in the above-mentioned Juice Terry and his aging "alter ego" Post Alec. But there is no one in the novel quite as engaging as Renton, the Sick Boy, Spud, or Begbie. If you haven't already read "Trainspotting," do so first. And by all means, see the film. Then you may be eager for whatever narrative crumbs Welsh has to offer in "Glue."

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This was an excellent book. If you like trainspotting you will like this book a lot. The scottish slang took awhile to get used to, but after about 100 pages its no problem.