Synopsis
Four lads in an Edinburgh housing project grow up and in the process provide a vivid portrait--sometimes painful, sometimes humorous--of a beleaguered class, its victims and its survivors. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2001-05-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 469 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 20.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
An epic novel about the bonds of friendship from the author of Trainspotting. The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, Glue is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century—from punk to techno, from speed to E. Their mutual loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don't hit women, and, most important, never snitch—on anyone. Glue has the Irvine Welsh trademarks—crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor—but it is also a grown-up book about growing up—about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.
Industry Reviews
"GLUE is too perceptive to be a 'laddish' book, and it would be a mistake to see it as typical of that genre, with its cheeky, smug and, at bottom, despicable boy-men. Nevertheless, it is a book about male inadequacy, in which we see that the essential characteristic of the boy-man is fear....The strength of GLUE lies in its revelation of the pathos inherent in the immaturity of that male subspecies...; at the same time, Welsh's relinquishment of his earlier panache, in favour of a more questioning narrative, and an occasionally flatter style, is a mark of his own increased maturity as a writer. Ending, as it does, in forgiveness, GLUE is, arguably, his best book, a seasoned examination of the Scottish male."
Times Literary Supplement - John Burnside (05/04/2001)
"Reading anything by Irvine Welsh is sort of like reading Chaucer if you are not fluent in Middle English....It's best to shrug one's shoulders and go for full immersion in Welsh's language, which, like good lager, is strong, heady and likely to produce symptoms of intoxication. A few details will probably slip past you like lost car keys, but Welsh's prose will get you drunk all the same....Welsh's novel describes a highly scripted, slangy, violent, sexy, drunken series of events that, over time, constitutes a fully realized vision of the world....You can't ask for much more than that."
Slate - Amy Benfer (05/17/2001)
"Welsh's sense of pace and his ear for dialogue are both excellent. One of his main purposes in writing fiction seems to be to transcribe the obscene speech of working people....Readers in search of f**** and c**** won't be disappointed, but there is more to it than that. For example, Welsh is very good at dark threats of violence."
Literary Review - Andrew Biswell (05/01/2001)
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