Filth

Rating:
Summary: The Train Derails at the Last Stop
Review: After the blockbuster Trainspotting and the equally brilliant but unrecognized Marabou Stork Nightmares, comes this novel Filth. One thing is for certain - Welsh writes brilliantly in the scottish slang vernacular and he has an ability to deliver one powerful ending after another. He is a deranged O'Henry. 3/4 of the novel is shocking, disgusting, revolting, hilarious, and all the other adjectives used when describing Welsh's talents and his prose style. The tapeworm and its philosophical musings is hilarious, irrelevent, and original. The actual ending is shocking but the events leading up to the final scene get away from Mr. Welsh. Yes, his relations with his wife are absolutely jaw-dropping(Can't go into detail, just read and you will see) but I just didn't feel like Bruce's past from the coal mines should have been told by the tapeworm. He left out information vital to the story and had the tapeworm fill the reader in. Pretty weak narrative device. But i am an admirer of Welsh and his original voice so I still enjoyed the novel. It is just flawed, that's all. Just don't ever let your guard down when reading this book. He will surprise you with a few scenes here and the ending is true to the title Filth.

Rating:
Summary: Just Great!
Review: I brought this book with me on my flight to the Dam, full of posh and eager to start Roger Mooring. I couldn't tear my eyes off the thing. Well done Welsh! Love that Robbo...a true blue solid polis after my own heart. ...

Rating:
Summary: The funniest book I've ever read
Review: I was in stitches reading this. It's one of those books I always go back and re-read the funny sections. When Bruce goes on one of his discourses on his tastes in popular music (Michael Bolton, Phil Collins, Foreigner), I gasp for air I'm laughing so hard. How tasteless it may seem, relax, it's black comedy/satire. If you don't agree with my assesment, my guess is that you're some PC bleeding heart. If you are, go read the Joy Luck Club or some feminist book.

Rating:
Summary: Bad lieutenaut
Review: This is a funny book. It's also the most difficult to read since Maribou Stork Nightmares. Welsh uses more tricks and interruptions in this book than in most. You never forget that you are reading a book. Welsh is known for his good taste in music and occasional DJing himself. In this book the main character likes so much bad music like Phil Collins, Michael Bolton, and hair metal. It reminds me of American Psycho.

Rating:
Summary: The funniest book I've ever read
Review: This is the nastiest, funniest book I have ever read. If you spend over 3 hours a week attending religious services, I suggest that you buy another book. However, if you are a drug loving, sex loving, worthless being, (like me,) you will enjoy this book.
Tip for Americans: Read difficult dialouge outloud. Welsh phonetically spells for accents.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Entertaining
Review: This was a real page burner for me. I opened up the novel with delightful disgust every time, wondering what sort of horribleness Bruce Robertson would be up to today. Irvine Welsh takes the idea of a despicable anti-hero to an entertaining extreme. I also find his dialogue heavy style very engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Just Great!
Review: Welsh has put the 'T' back into trash with Filth. But the fact of the matter is that he has to be one of the most talented authors I have ever read. The book is written in Scottish dialect which gives the reader a much more realistic perspective when reading the novel. Another very interesting technique used by Welsh is the use of a dash instead of quotation marks to show dialogue.The main character is very complex, although Welsh passes him off as a degenerate. The novel is filled with profanity, but don't be offended, it is mainly just Scottish slang and is not always used to offend anyone. Probably my favorite thing about Filth, is the frame story using a tapeworm living in the main characters gut as the narrator. Filled with heaving drug use and debauchery that is oh so very necessary, Filth is a humorous novel and will definetly teach any reader how NOT to treat people. And to those of you who want to send their mothers into shock, give them Filth as a gift...

Rating:
Summary: Filthy indeed.
Review: Welsh held true to his title. This book was indeed full of filth. This dark comedy seems to mixed with a warning for those following down the same path as the "hero". The book is written in Scottish vernacular, which provides a more "realistic" reading session. It's almost as if Bruce himself is in fact telling you all these things.

We're introduced to D.S. Bruce Robertson, a racist, misogynistic Scottish cop leading the investigation of the murder of the son of a Ghanaian ambassador. This poses a problem for Bruce seeing as he doesn't have time to be worrying about "topped coons". He's more interesting sleeping with anything that could be considered female (including women of different races, but that's acceptable in his book).

Bruce lives under the illusion that he has everything under control, but in reality, his life is falling to pieces around him. It starts with physical deterioration. Bruce is plagued with a nasty rash on his gential region, and now, he has a tapeworm, who is surprisingly introspective for a "simple organism". This tapeworm's monologues usually took place right in down the center of a page.

Secondly, Bruce's mental state is slowly crumbling. He has a theory that only a finite number of bad things can happen in the world, and if they're happening to someone else, those bad things can't be happening to him. So, Bruce pits his co-workers against one another by discreetly destroying their lives and feeding them lies. He wants them miserable because their misery will feed his joy.

He isn't a man with much on his side, but he likes to believe that he is the most crafty man in the world. He gives advice on how one can stay on top, but really these serve as a warning of what NOT to do.

However, the positioning, if you will, of the tapeworm's monologues threw me off a bit. I didn't mind them, but I didn't like the fact that the cut right through Bruce's own telling of the story. I found myself trying to figure out what was being said BEHIND the tapeworm's monologues.

Filth is trashy, filthy, and an amusing read. Bruce is a walking contradiction and disgusting to boot. And while I found myself laughing at the sheer crudeness of some scenes in the book, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming pity for Bruce.

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating failure
Review: Welsh's talent for narrative and dialog are superb, so much so that I couldn't put the book down. So, why am I giving it a mere two stars? Because it doesn't work as a novel. The business with the tapeworm as Bruce's alter ego, conscience or whatever, just didn't fly as a literay conceit. It didn't explain Bruce's character or behavior in any satisfactory way. For most of the book we're given no hint as to what made Bruce such and evil monster until toward the very end, when it's all crammed together. That doesn't work, either, and the explaination as to how Bruce became such a nasty piece of work just wasn't there.

Welsh is fond of wearing his politics on his sleeve. Did we really need a rant about Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War at one point in the narrative? Of course, an author is entitled to express whatever opinions he may hold, yet this little digression had nothing to do with the novel. Welsh feels a compunction to let us know what a proper leftist/liberal he is, with his frequent gratuitous digs at the police and the Free Masons.

The shocking (but not surprising) ending struck me as an exercise in lurid exploition. After showing us throughout the novel what a nasty and violent individual the protagonist is,
Walsh exploits that very violence in the ending and goes 'out of his way' to wallow in it(like many a Hollywood movie, come to think of it).

Yet I'd real Welsh again. As I mentioned earlier, the narrative and dialog are outstanding and held my attention all the way. It had a fresh and alive quality. The contemporary Scottish slang was a bit challenging at first (to these American ears), but there again, it 'sounded' fresh and alive.

Welsh is obviously a talented writer of great potential. I think he just needs to grow up a bit and take his own persona out of the picture.

Rating:
Summary: A Depressing, but Compelling Story of Surprising Depth
Review: While it's one of the more depressing books I've read in a while, it was also one of the most enjoyable books as well. Welch does a great job with dialogue, and the narrative is entertaining. There were rare moments that I found less than credible, but they tended to be funny moments that did not detract from the book's value. He also does an excellent job of developing the character of his protagonist, who is one of the most rounded, complex and believable characters to be found in contemporary fiction. Admittedly, many will disagree with that last assertion, but I think that that is due to a misreading of the character and the book.

The protagonist Bruce Robertson seems sociopathic at the outset. He is a mean and cruel man, unable to empathize with others, and who entertains himself with the misery of others. He does not seem to have a noble sentiment in him, and he leads a filthy life of cruelty and debauchery. But Robertson is not a reliable narrator, even when it comes to himself. He believes himself to be this sociopathic monster, when in reality, he's a better person than he believes himself to be. Sometimes his more noble aspects slip out. More often, he's gratuitously cruel. Over time, we realize that Robertson is not really a sociopath at all, but that he actually suffers from depression.

This depression is brought on, and made worse by Robertson's inability to release his emotions. He fills his spare time with alcohol, drugs, and sex to avoid thinking about the horrors he has confronted on his job as a police man, such as grisly murders and child abuse. He constructs a tough façade so that he does not have to confront his feelings about his wife and daughter who have left him, or about his rough childhood. These squelched emotions eat away at him from the inside, and destroy his soul. The tapeworm, which takes over narrative duties at times, represent these parasitic feelings eating away at him from the inside because he has been unable to deal with them in a psychologically healthy way.

Disgust with Robertson gives way to pity as we realize the spiral that Robertson is trapped in. Unable to establish intimacy with friends or family because of his avoidance of his problems, he has no one to talk to about these problems as they worsen and take over his life and personality. His avoidance of these emotional problems manifest themselves physically in the form of a painful eczema on his nether regions. Eventually, we come to realize that Robertson is a better person than he will acknowledge, and this is most evident when he tries to save the life of a young man with a genetic heart problem whose death leaves behind a wife and young son. Tellingly, in the immediate aftermath, Robertson's anger is ignited when a reporter asks him how the man's death made him feel. Immediately the psychological walls are constructed, and the brief glimpse we have of a "human" Bruce Roberston gives way to the brute image we are confronted with through most of the book. This is a recurring theme in the book, as Robertson avoids the question of how major events make him feel.

This psychological complexity is one of the books greatest strengths as Welch weaves a compelling tale of great depth. A path of salvation, and a potential chance for happiness for Robertson are evident towards the end of the novel, and this, I think, is another interesting aspect of the novel, as it shows that everyone has a chance for redemption, and that life is never hopeless. Most people might find that an interesting lesson to take from this book, as it perhaps isn't so superficially evident. But I think a careful reading, which I believe this book warrants, bear this out. Very Highly Recommended.