James Campbell
Glue by Irvine Welsh (Jonathan Cape)
Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting was about a bunch of daft lads (or sub-psychopaths) whose violence and amorality were supposedly explained by their origins in soulless Edinburgh housing schemes. They devoured drink, drugs and wee lassies by the ton. The one thing that inspired them was tribal loyalty: they stuck together like well, like glue. Welsh’s publishers call Glue “a return to form”, which is something of a backhanded compliment. What they probably mean is a return to Trainspotting.
Trainspotting had a disjointed structure that suited its zonked-out state of mindlessness and emphasised the characters’ lack of connection to anything except each other. Glue, by contrast, is carefully crafted. It employs multiple perspective and skilfully plays with a form of narrative rewind whereby a fuzzy incident in chapter six, say, gains definition when replayed in chapter nine. Welsh flits between standard English, in which he is not entirely comfortable, and the more expressive but limited schemie demotic, in which he is fluent is, in fact, the lad himself.
Glue has an epic scale. It charts the rites of passage of four friends: Terry, Carl, Billy and Gally. Various plots are kept going from beginning to end, but the main interest is generated by the overlapping lives of the principal characters. Terry is a lovable rogue and a Casanova; he has never got over being laid off from his early career selling bottles of juice from a van around the schemes. The job provided scope for his seduction technique, astonishingly successful despite a ridiculous hairdo, chronic flatulence and an ever-expanding beer belly.
Carl aka the Milky Bar Kid, aka DJ N-Sign values character in a girl more than Terry does, though he listens carefully when his mate says “ye cannae fuck a personality”. He is something of an outsider, being a Hearts fan (the others support Hibs) and coming from a stable family. His skills at the turntable are his passport through life, until he almost surrenders to an overdose of Ecstasy and cocaine. Gally is an oversensitive type who attracts bad luck. He remains a virgin for a preposterously long time (the reluctant female being a rare breed here), catches Aids from dirty needles and commits suicide.
Billy is probably the most plausible stab at a three-dimensional character. Restrained and ambitious, he makes the grade as a professional boxer before retiring to run a profitable bar. Billy keeps his aptitude for violence under control. His squeamish side comes out when, in the course of a burglary, the ringleader breaks the legs of a couple of guard dogs, tapes their muzzles, strings them over a tree and sets them on fire. “It wid be kinder for thum tae die,” reasons Billy as he watches a madman called Doyle torture the dogs. “Ah jist shrugged. Thir wis nowt any cunt could dae tae stoap Doyle.”
As the lads grow bigger, they naturally wish to broaden their minds by watching football in foreign cities, comparing German beer with McEwan’s Export and checking out Australia’s suitability for raves. Given Welsh’s descriptive talent, there is curiously little feeling for life beyond the schemes. He shares this lack with his characters. No matter how far they travel, Terry, Carl and Gally will never recognise value in outsiders; others remain the Other.
Central to the world described in Glue are Carl’s dad’s 10 rules: always back up your mates, never cross a picket line, never grass a friend or foe, etc. Mates are everything (Glue is dedicated to a football quorum of 11 mates). Your mates will back you up when there’s a riot at a Hibs v Rangers match in fact, your mates started it by infiltrating the visitors’ end and head-butting every wanker in sight. No species is more exotic than women, however, who are so Other that they are never simply women. They are rides, cows, slags, hounds, hoors or, at the upper end of the market, quality fanny, premium minge. The occasional glimmers of tenderness in Welsh’s many sex scenes are quickly overwhelmed by, for example, a disquisition on a slag’s dietary habits evidenced by a bout of anal sex.
Late in the novel, a girl gang enters the action. However, the girls are simply XX-chromosome versions of the lads. “Cocks oot fir the lassies!”, one of them shouts at “two young studenty guys” on a train. Lisa is the champion ride. “She’s some machine,” says her friend appreciatively. “Shaggin that boy fae Tranent in the bogs comin back oan the plane.” Not surprisingly, Lisa will soon discover that “Terry was a brilliant shag”.
The book contains one gesture in the direction of civility. When Billy helps an elderly neighbour with heavy shopping bags, offering to drive her home, the reader experiences a sense of relief, almost of gratitude. Here is a value that is not a “load ay shite”. To the readers of Glue, who will doubtless number hundreds of thousands, I say: don’t miss Billy’s charitable act. It occurs on page 174.