- Published: 19 April 2012
- ISBN: 9781409028239
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
Skagboys
- Published: 19 April 2012
- ISBN: 9781409028239
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 560
Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work
Peter Murphy, Irish Times
Skagboys is a compelling tale...a seriously entertaining piece of work
Irish Times
Skagboys, technically, is a prequel to the Leith author's brilliant 1993 debut...the result is a longer, deeper and more affecting work, one which explains and explores the circumstances under which Renton, Sick Boy, Tommy, Spud and Begbie - a roll call as familiar as Disney's Seven Dwarves for readers of a certain age - became the characters they did... It's an undeniably funny book, funny in that three-wit way of being at once visceral and true. Welsh's knack for dialogue - both ineternal and conversational - remains virtuosic and often exhilarating. It makes for characters you can't help but care about even the psychopaths and amoral chancers like Begbie and Sick Boy... Welsh's finest work to date
Ben Machell, The Times
Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that’s the most compelling story
Stylist
A brilliantly funny, scary, sweeping novel with all the energy of Welsh’s debut
Independent on Sunday
A brilliantly funny, scary, sweeping novel with all the energy of Welsh's debut, but imbued with a wider sense of political and social engagement
Doug Johnstone, Independent on Sunday
A cracking read
Time Out
A cracking read.
Time Out
Brilliant and even more thrilling than its predecessor
Mail on Sunday
Engaging, heartfelt and brutal.
welovethisbook.com
Every bit as impressive as Trainspotting
Daily Telegraph
Filthy, furious and very funny, this is Welsh back on blistering top form
Mail on Sunday
Filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny… Remarkable
Daily Telegraph
Funny…visceral and true… Welsh’s finest work to date
The Times
His best work in many years… An essential read
Irish Examiner
I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction.
D J Taylor, Spectator
If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you will adore this prequel... I think that Welsh has achieved the impossible and produced a prequel that betters the main text
Nudge
If you too loved the colloquial tangle of Trainspotting, you'll find a similar rhythm in Skagboys
Andrew Collins, Word Magazine
I'm not sure that in 2012 there will be a single novel, never mind half a dozen, with more verve or nous or life in it than Skagboys. Ye kin pure tell they Booker gadgies'll no huv the baws but...
Anthony Cummins, Literary Review
It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh’s vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive
Vogue
It was never going to be light reading, but Welsh's vigour, wit and energy still make it compulsive
Charlotte Sinclair, Vogue
It's brilliant and even more thrilling than its predecessor
Simon Humphreys, Mail on Sunday
Like Trainspotting, Skagboys thrusts along with the exuberance of its episodic stories. Welsh hasn't lost his flair for comic set pieces
Robert Collins, Sunday Times
Masterful - crude, violent and poetic by turns... Its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page. A film, one suspects, isn't far off
Arifa Akbar, Independent
Masterful… its banter, outrage and razor wit sing off the page
Independent
One of the most significant writers in Britain. He writes with style, imagination, wit and force.
Times Literary Supplement
Quite simply a masterpiece
Scotsman
Quite simply a masterpiece…at least as assured and vibrant in its characterization as Trainspotting, Skagboys is even more on the money politically… this novel more than any other , (including its brilliant predecessor) stands as our spiritual and moral history.
The Scotsman
The voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent.
The Times
There is enough of what Welsh does well — needle-sharp dialogue, vivid characters and a certainty of place — to make Skagboys his best work in many years…an essential read.
Timothy Mo, Irish Examiner
Trainspotting may be a masterpiece but Skagboys is the reason the artist painted it, and sometimes that's the most compelling story
Joanna McGarry, Stylist
Visceral, tragic and comic, with Welsh’s schlock-shock appeal
Arifa Akbar
Welsh always spins his yarns with grisly élan.
Extra Time
Welsh performs the mysterious feat of making you think that his characters are real
Guardian
Welsh performs the mysterious feat of making you think that his characters are real
Theo Tait, Guardian
Welsh revisits his old demons to give us the Trainspotting prequel...Expect more of the same raw wit and energy.
Toni & Guy
Welsh somehow manages to be both the Zola of Therese Raquin, and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, ranging between quasi-scientific perspective and a more immersed, troubling one. That he does so for the most part in a furious low Scots vernacular - filthy, or fulthy, and hugely funny at times - may seem remarkable
Keith Miller, Daily Telegraph
While you can place him in a literary tradition which flows from Alasdair Gray and James Kelman (and maybe Joyce before that), Welsh remains a lapsed punk, hung up on the Velvets and Iggy Pop
Alastair McKay, Evening Standard