Porno...

As a massive Irvine Welsh fan, I found it almost criminal that I hadn't read his sequel to "Trainspotting", poignantly entitled "Porno". So I dug it out just over a week ago and got straight into it. I'm almost near the end of the book now and I have to say I prefer it to the former. It's not for the fainthearted: if you thought "Trainspotting" was vile, read this. The main plotline revolves around Simon "Sick Boy" Williamson's mission to make something of himself after fucking up a marriage and a fatherhood and occupations as a pimp and hustler. I'm not gonna ruin it with any details but he ends up making, you guessed it, an "erotic adult fantasy" with a motley crew of various characters, and events occur which at some points are enough to make your stomach turn.

Sick Boy's kicked heroin and instead indulges in cocaine, alcohol and the odd hit of a crack pipe, but we get to meet a few old faces from "Trainspotting" that still go back to the needle, nameley the loveable loser Danny "Spud" Murphy. The mentally unhinged sociopath Francis Begbie makes a return, along with the "thieving cunt" Mark Renton, who screwed over his pals in the previous novel (except Spud), and so things are scarily tense at times during "Porno".

It wouldn't be an Irvine Welsh novel without plenty of graphic sexual scenarios, and "Porno" takes the biscuit from anything I've read before, except of course Brett Easton Ellis's "American Psycho", which is by far the most shocking thing I've ever read and possibly ever will. Still, I found myself laughing out very loudly during "Porno", due to Welsh's unmatchable ability to give social commentary on very awkward and pitiful people and situations. It's absolutely hilarious getting inside Sick Boy's head, and his observations are comedy gold for the most part. So far, so good. I'll have finished it within the next couple of days, and its proving to be as disturbing as I'd hoped. If you haven't picked up any of Welsh's books in the past, do yourself a favour and sort it out.