 | |
| Author | Irvine Welsh |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape (UK) W. W. Norton (US) |
Publication date | 19 April 2012 (UK) 17 September 2012 (US) |
| Publication place | Scotland |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 1409028232 |
| Preceded by | Porno |
Skagboys is a 2012 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. [1] It is a prequel to his 1993 novel Trainspotting , and its 2002 sequel Porno . It follows the earlier lives of characters Renton and Sick Boy as they first descend into heroin addiction. [2]
When Welsh described the novel he said: "I think I'm going to call it Skag Boys: "skag" is my favourite word for heroin. It's set before their fall into heroin and investigates how the main characters became junkies, the family dynamics, the anxieties of young men. A lot of the fringe characters become more prominent". [3]
"I had a great deal of material that for various reasons, namely pace and because it didn't fit with the timeframe, wasn't suitable for the book. There's a particular section about Renton and Sick Boy's first visit to London to stay with their friend Nicksy in Hackney that I always wanted to publish, but it was just a bit too long for magazines and anthologies. So I've pulled back some of the other unused Trainspotting material and put alongside this piece. The thing is basically a prequel to Trainspotting. It's basically about how Renton and Sick Boy went from being daft young guys just out for the buzz on drugs, to total junkies. It shows how their attitudes and behaviour start to change as they become more defined by the drug and the culture around it." [4]
In 2012, Welsh said the prequel was actually initially written as part of Trainspotting but was not used in the published version. He later decided he would either erase his old work or use it in some way, as "he had a fear that he might fall under a bus and leave behind 'half-written stuff' which people would publish". He said, "I just went through it and started writing on the basis of what was there, getting inspired by what I was reading and chopping bits out and putting bits in. Before I knew it I had another novel on my hands". [5]
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(April 2013) |
The novel begins in Yorkshire in 1984, where Mark Renton and his father Davie have travelled to join a picket of the coke plant. Mark is shaken after getting caught in the violence, and he travels to Manchester, where at a party he is offered heroin, which he refuses. In the Banana Flats, Sick Boy decides to seduce his neighbours' daughter, Maria. He goes to the pub with her father, Coke, but they are ejected by the violent, ex-cop landlord Dickson.
Renton, Begbie, Spud, Tommy and Keezbo are watching football in a pub when teenage Samantha Frenchard arrives and confronts Begbie over her pregnancy. Renton and Sick Boy visit Swanney, a drug dealer, and Renton takes heroin for the first time. Samantha's family begin planning revenge on Begbie for his dismissive response to the pregnancy.
Sick Boy and Coke visit Dickson's pub again, but Dickson beats Coke unconscious, and he later dies in hospital. Renton moves in with Sick Boy. At a drug den in Muirhouse, Renton meets Alison and later finds out that her mother is dying; her friend Sylvia takes Renton home to Lochend for sex. Renton later gives Spud his first hit of heroin. Alison learns that her boss's brother is involved in drug smuggling, and seduces her boss.
During an Aberdeen University trip to Europe, Renton begins a relationship with his classmate Fiona. Returning home, he learns that his brother has died. Amid tensions between Renton and his family during funeral preparations, Fiona arrives and soothes the situation. Meanwhile, with Maria in Nottingham, Sick Boy seduces her mother Janey and encourages her to fraudulently claim Coke's pension. Begbie stabs one of Samantha's brothers.
While Dickson is cleared of Coke's murder, Sick Boy secretly reports Janey for benefit fraud and she goes to prison, while Sick Boy takes Maria under his control. Begbie, Tommy, and others go to Pilton and besiege the Frenchard family's home, culminating in Begbie smashing her brother Ronnie's face with an iron bar.
In Aberdeen, Renton meets Don, who becomes his heroin connection. His relationship with Fiona deteriorates and eventually ends due to his heroin use. Sick Boy pimps Maria to support their heroin addictions, and lets homeless Spud stay at his flat. When Don leaves town, Renton moves back to Edinburgh to also stay with Sick Boy.
Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Keezbo, Tommy and Spud attempt a burglary, but interrupt a Spanish au pair, Carmelita, during an attempted suicide. Later, Alison, Renton and Sick Boy go to Swanney's after visiting a club, and Alison recognises a worker from the chemical plant supplying heroin to Swanney. Alison takes Sick Boy home to Pilrig, where they engage in pegging. Sick Boy and Maria visit Janey in prison, who is distraught at their relationship. Back in Leith, Sick Boy connects a drugged Maria with more clients, including Dickson.
Alison befriends Maria and delivers her to her family in Nottingham. After witnessing her mother's death from cancer she visits Swanney, where Matty and Swanney argue about Matty's attempts to deal.
Renton and Sick Boy go to stay with Nicksy in London. Sick Boy is dating a rich woman, Lucinda, under false pretenses. He encourages Lucinda to shoot heroin, and later connects with Nicksy's neighbour and love interest Marsha. Begbie phones Renton to say he is moving in with June, whose father caught them having sex and kicked her out. Sick Boy and Renton successfully interview for a job on a Sealink Harwich-Amsterdam ferry, with the intention of smuggling heroin.
Renton and Nicksy go back to Leith for Hogmanay, leaving Sick Boy in London. At a party, Renton comforts a bereaved Alison, before spending a night with Lesley. The next morning Renton joins his friends in the pub for the Hibs-Hearts game, after which violence erupts.
Begbie has started working as an enforcer for local gangster Davie Power, and is ordered to menace his uncle Dickie, a pub owner, resolving the situation with extreme violence.
Learning Spud is a heroin addict, Renton's parents suspect Renton is too, and argue. Afterwards, at the pub, Davie Renton has a bitter argument with Dickson. Davie's oldest son, Billy, witnesses the confrontation, and after Davie leaves, lures Dickson outside in order to beat him savagely, while his friends wreck the pub.
In London, Nicksy finds Marsha's aborted foetus in the block's rubbish chute while trying to rescue a puppy, and resolves to bury it at sea.
Begbie interrupts Tommy with new girlfriend Lizzie, trying to persuade him to participate in a violent outing at the Hibs-Aberdeen game, but Tommy is increasingly wary of his friends. A despondent Alison meets a drunk Begbie in the street, June having suffered a miscarriage. Begbie engages in violence again shortly afterwards, and is sent to prison.
On the guys' first day on the boat, some football hooligans start a riot, during which Sick Boy steals the wallet of their supervisor, Cream Shirt, and Renton takes heroin and skives. Renton begins a sexual relationship with their colleague Charlene, a career thief. The next morning drug kingpin Marriot briefs Renton, Sick Boy, and Nicksy about their role as mules, but they decide to withdraw from the scam. Marriot, furious, is forced to transport 50 grams of heroin through customs alone. They return to Hackney, resolving not to return to Sealink. After a brief, intense fling, Charlene dumps Renton, and accidentally takes Nicksy's foetus while attempting to steal from Renton as she leaves. Nicksy goes upstairs to confront Marsha about the foetus, but during the altercation climbs out onto her window ledge. Sick Boy and Lucinda arrive at the flats to find police trying to talk Nicksy inside. Marsha reveals Sick Boy's infidelities to Lucinda, who storms off. A social worker takes Nicksy away.
Later, Renton is on methadone, but still using. He spends a night at his family home, but argues with his family the next day, confessing his heroin habit. Renton sells records for heroin money, but Swanney pockets this for previous debts, and has no more heroin for them. Sick Boy, Matty, and Renton meet Maria and her friend Jenny at a bar, where Renton learns that two friends are both HIV-positive. Renton and Matty steal a charity collection tin. While trying to open it, they rescue Keezbo, whose parents have locked him on a balcony. Opening the tin, they are intercepted by police, and Renton, Keezbo and Matty are arrested. Keezbo and Renton are ordered into rehab, while Matty is given a suspended sentence. Renton, Swanney, Sick Boy, Spud and Seeker enter rehab together.
Alison is struggling to hold down her job with a heroin addiction, but is protected by Alexander, her lover and boss. After an argument, she quits, later slashing her wrists. Realizing her mistake, she calls an ambulance. Alexander comes to look after her, but ends their affair.
In rehab, Renton rebels, Sick Boy seduces a fellow inmate, and Swanney suggests that Matty is an informant. On his release, Renton is already planning to score during his welcome home party.
In prison, Begbie is asked by Renton to beat up a paedophile (in fact Hazel's father), but Begbie brutally assaults the wrong man.
Renton wakes up next to Hazel, before joining Sick Boy to look for heroin, amid a severe heroin drought in Edinburgh. Walking past the chemical plant where the morphine is made, they hatch a plan to rob it, which Renton, Sick Boy, Keezbo, Spud and Matty carry out that evening. Upon entering, they trigger the alarm, but during their escape Keezbo gets marooned inside, through Matty's fault. Renton and Sick Boy turn on Matty afterwards and he leaves, to be comforted by Spud. On their way home, Renton and Sick Boy make a pact to get clean and never touch heroin again, but as they open the door of the flat, the phone is ringing.
The book is punctuated by bulletin-style updates on the spread of AIDS in Edinburgh, including growing lists of victims featuring main and incidental characters from the plot.
Sam Leith, in the Financial Times , argues, "Heroin addiction is there not as a metaphor but as a sort of paradigm: a morally inverted Thatcherism. The addict is the ultimate individualist." [6]
3:AM Magazine remarks, "It was known that there was more material of Trainspotting than went into the final draft, but that’s true of most novels. So you anticipate a lashed-together series of outtakes and bloopers. What you get is something quite different. The prequel has all the marvellous set pieces, the schemes, stories, scams and dreams and the same mad profusion of narrators that characterises everything Welsh has written. But it’s long, strange, full of lush description that gives the whole thing a haunting and elegiac quality". [7]
Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist and short story writer. His 1993 novel Trainspotting was made into a film of the same name. He has also written plays and screenplays, and directed several short films.
Trainspotting is a 1996 British black comedy-drama film directed by Danny Boyle, and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle and Kelly Macdonald in her film debut. Based on the 1993 novel of the same title by Irvine Welsh, the film was released in the United Kingdom on 23 February 1996.
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, first published in 1993. It takes the form of a collection of short stories, written in either Scots, Scottish English or British English, revolving around various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are effectively addictions. The novel is set in the late 1980s and has been described by The Sunday Times as "the voice of punk, grown up, grown wiser and grown eloquent". The title is an ironic reference to the characters’ frequenting of the disused Leith Central railway station.
Porno is a novel published in 2002 by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, the sequel to Trainspotting. The book describes the characters of Trainspotting ten years after the events of the earlier book, as their paths cross again, this time with the pornography business as the backdrop rather than heroin use. A number of characters from Glue make an appearance as well.
Marabou Stork Nightmares is an experimental novel by Irvine Welsh, and his second novel, published in the UK in 1995.
Filth is a 1998 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It was adapted into a 2013 film of the same name, directed by Jon S. Baird with James McAvoy in the lead role. A sequel, Crime, was published in 2008.
Ewen Bremner is a Scottish actor. His roles have included Julien in Julien Donkey-Boy and Daniel "Spud" Murphy in Trainspotting and its 2017 sequel T2 Trainspotting.
Gridlock'd is a 1997 American black comedy crime film written and directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall, and starring Tupac Shakur, Tim Roth, Lucy Liu and Thandiwe Newton. It was the directorial debut of Curtis-Hall, who also has a small role in the film. The film's opening was relatively low, despite critical acclaim; its opening weekend netted only $2,678,372 and it finished with a little over $5.5 million. Shakur died four months before the film's release.
The Acid House is a 1998 Scottish film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's short story collection The Acid House directed by Paul McGuigan. Welsh himself wrote the screenplay and appears as a minor character in the film. All three sections are independent, but are linked by the setting of Edinburgh and the reappearance of incidental characters, in particular Maurice Roëves, who appears variously as an inebriated wedding guest, a figure in a dream, and a pub patron. All three of his parts symbolise a human manifestation of God.
Muirhouse is a housing estate in the north of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.
Sasha Valentine is a fictional character from the British Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks, played by Nathalie Emmanuel. Sasha first appeared on-screen on 17 July 2006 as part of the newly introduced Valentine family. Sasha has been at the centre of many high-profile storylines including use of recreational drugs, a heroin addiction and a subsequent overdose, prostitution, a victim of a series of violent attacks, portraying a gangster's moll and binge drinking. In March 2010, Paul Marquess announced that 11 characters are to depart the show which included Sasha. Although it was initially reported Emmanuel was axed, Ricky Whittle confirmed she had planned to leave at the end of her contract. Emmanuel left in 2010 and was later credited on 1 December 2010 for a flashback episode.
Mark Renton is a fictional character who appears as the protagonist in the novels Trainspotting (1993) and Porno (2002) written by Irvine Welsh. He also appears in the 1996 film adaptation of Trainspotting and its sequel T2 Trainspotting (2017), in both of which he is portrayed by Ewan McGregor.
Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy is a 2011 Canadian film adaptation of the short story "The Undefeated" from the best-selling book Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh. Directed by Rob Heydon, the film stars Adam Sinclair as Lloyd Buist, a drug user who smuggles ecstasy from Amsterdam. Kristin Kreuk plays his love interest, Heather Thompson.
Reheated Cabbage is a collection of short stories by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It was released in the United Kingdom in July 2009.
Alison Begbie, Ellison Begbie or Elizabeth Gebbie (1762–1823), is said to have been the daughter of a farmer, born in the parish of Galston, and at the time of her courtship by Robert Burns she is thought to have been a servant or housekeeper employed at Carnell House, then known as Cairnhill, on the River Cessnock, situated about 2 miles from Loudoun Mill. It is thought that Burns's youngest sister Isobel Burns confused her name, which was really Elizabeth Gebbie.
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is the ninth novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, published in May 2014.
T2 Trainspotting is a 2017 British black comedy-drama film directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge. Set in and around Edinburgh, Scotland, it is based on characters created by Irvine Welsh in his 1993 novel Trainspotting and its 2002 follow-up Porno. A sequel to Boyle's 1996 film Trainspotting, T2 stars the original ensemble cast, including leads Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle, with Shirley Henderson, James Cosmo, and Kelly Macdonald. The film features a new character, Veronika, played by Anjela Nedyalkova, and includes clips, music, and archive sound from the first film.
The Sir George Robey was a mid-19th century public house and later a music venue on Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park, North London, England. It was named in honour of the music hall performer Sir George Robey (1869–1954) in 1968.
Ruaraidh Murray is a Scottish actor, writer, and comedian.
Dead Men's Trousers is a 2018 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is a sequel to his earlier books Trainspotting, Porno and Skagboys. Set in 2015, it follows the characters Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie as they meet up again as middle-aged men.