 First edition | |
| Author | Irvine Welsh |
|---|---|
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Published | 2014 (Jonathan Cape) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 468 |
| ISBN | 978-022408788-9 |
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is the ninth novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, published in May 2014.
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Lucy Brennan is a tough, sadistic, foul-mouthed, bisexual personal trainer. When she’s not finding new ways to insult her clients and hitting Miami’s nightclubs, she diligently tracks her calories with an app called Life map. Lucy leaves a failed romantic evening. She gets caught up in a chase—one gunman and two fleeing homeless victims on the road she finds herself on. In an instant, she reacts and knocks the gunman to the ground, allowing the victims to escape.
She becomes a huge media story when the incident is recorded by Lena Sorenson, an overweight, successful, sculptor who is sorely lacking in self-confidence. Lucy's heroic intervention to stop the murderous assault gets a lot of media attention and unsurprisingly, Sorenson’s video turns Brennan into a media sensation. The story competes for airtime and America’s rapt attention with a story about conjoined twins Anabelle and Amy and the should-they/ shouldn’t-they debate about a risky separation operation so Anabelle can have sex with her boyfriend.
Lucy Brennan is a body-obsessed personal trainer, and Lena Sorenson is a food-obsessed sculptor. They are both fascinated with shape and form and suffer from trauma-induced ruts.
In an exciting twist, it turns out that the two frightened men; Lucy saves from the angry gunman, turned out to be paedophiles. The media focus shifts quickly from the heroine to whether she should have stopped a victim of sexual abuse from taking his revenge.
We find this all out just as Lucy and Lena are getting closer, the latter having hired the former as her trainer. What initially appears to be a one-way relationship bordering on stalking, Lena to Lucy, turns out to be much more. Lena gradually becomes Lucy's obsession, and more specifically Lucy's obsession with removing the fat from Lena's body.
When Lena keeps sneaking key lime pies, Lucy's behavior turns abusive while her interest in Lena turns perversely sexual. Lena is finally drugged and imprisoned in an abandoned apartment complex after she runs out of patience. Lena finally manages to lose weight thanks to her captor's blueberry and protein shake diet, which leaves her alone in her home gym and treadmill. Despite being cuffed to a pillar and urinating into a bucket, she still looks amazing.
Just as America becomes obsessed with the sex lives of the twins, Lucy and Lena become increasingly intertwined with one another’s lives- what starts as a seemingly innocuous. However, this curious friendship soon explodes into an intensely sadomasochistic tango, which leads to kidnapping, commando-regulated diets and murder.
Similarities have been drawn between this book and Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting . Elena Seymenliyska of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "It's a bit like his debut, Trainspotting (1993), only instead of the tenements of Leith, we're in the condos of Miami Beach. And in place of heroin addicts, alcoholics and violent psychos, here we have fitness instructors, poseurs – and violent psychos."
The Guardian published a review of the book on 8 May 2014. In the review Sandra Newman takes issue with the lead character: "The pleasure of the book is spoiled by a radically misjudged narrator." Welsh's novel received a much more positive review from David Pollock, published in The Independent on 24 April 2014.
Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist, playwright 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 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".
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.
Glamorama is a 1998 novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis. Glamorama is set in and satirizes the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism. Time describes the novel as "a screed against models and celebrity".
Princess Daisy is a 1980 bonkbuster novel by American author Judith Krantz.
GOTH is a Japanese horror novel written by Otsuichi about two high school students fascinated by murder. The novel won the Honkaku Mystery Award in 2003. It was adapted into a manga by Kendi Oiwa. In October 2008, they were published in Japan by Kadokawa. Following this, they were published in English by Tokyopop in September, 2008. In 2008, the novel was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Gen Takahashi. The manga and novel was rereleased in North America by VIZ Media in August 2015. The stories were originally published in a single hardcover edition and then later published in the form of two paperback books.
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.
Skagboys is a 2012 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. 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.
Reheated Cabbage is a collection of short stories by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It was released in the United Kingdom in July 2009.
Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance is a collection of three novellas by Irvine Welsh.
A Wanted Man is the seventeenth book in the Jack Reacher series written by Lee Child. It was published on 30 August 2012 in the United Kingdom, Australia, & New Zealand and on 11 September 2012 in the USA & Canada. A Wanted Man won the "Thriller & Crime Novel of the Year" award by the National Book Awards.
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a 2013 young adult novel by Holly Black. The book was first published on September 3, 2013 through Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and follows Tana, a teenager that believes that she has been infected with vampirism. The basis for the novel came from a short story of the same name written by Black which was released in the prose anthology Eternal Kiss. Black was inspired to use the setting and the same title to tell the story of a different character set in the same world as the short story. The book was written to be a standalone novel and while Black has stated that she is not averse to writing a sequel, she has no plans to do so at this point in time.
Grits is the debut novel by British author Niall Griffiths, published in 2000 by Jonathan Cape. Set in and around Aberystwyth and concerning promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, and petty crime it gained for its author, who lives and works in the town the dubious honorific "the Welsh Irvine Welsh". The novel is largely autobiographical, Griffiths moved to Aberystwyth to research a PhD in post-war British poetry but soon became, as he puts it, an "enthusiastic participator in parties" and dropped out of his studies.
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.
Fishnet is the debut novel of Kirstin Innes, published in 2015 by Freight Books. The story follows a Scottish woman who, after learning her missing sister was working as a sex worker, sets out to examine the sex industry. Fishnet was the winner of the Guardian Not the Booker Prize 2015. Innes spoke at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2015 about Fishnet.
The Earthquake Bird is the debut novel by British author Susanna Jones published in 2001. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Betty Trask Award, and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger. The novel was later adapted by Wash Westmoreland into a film called the Earthquake Bird, which was released by Netflix in November 2019.
The Blade Artist is a 2016 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. The story follows on from Welsh's previous novels, Trainspotting and Porno, catching up with Begbie's past and present.
Dead Men's Trousers is a 2018 novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. Set in 2015, it follows Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie as they meet up again as middle-aged men.
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