If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, is up to his old tricks with his new work of transgressive short fiction.


Irvine Welsh's first short-story collection since his debut work The Acid House presents five extraordinary stories, which remind us that he is a master of the short form, a brilliant storyteller, and - unarguably - one of today's funniest and most subversive writers. In "Rattlesnakes" three young Americans, lost in the desert, are accosted by two armed Mexicans. A Korean chef and a Chicago socialite find themselves connected through the disappearance of a pooch named Toto in "The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park." And in the title story, Mickey Baker - an ex-pat English bar owner living on the Costa Brava - tries to keep all of his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid's weight at the sexual maximum, attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his ex-wife and Spanish gangsters.



In typically Welshian fashion, the characters and settings are anything but typical. These stories will make you laugh and gasp. Read more Continue reading Read less REVIEW
"Vigorous, stunningly funny...whimsical, warm, surreal, grotesque and brilliant" * Guardian * "Irvine Welsh is a terrific mimic... This collection of stories is a chorus of voices - rude, rough, discordant, filthy and often very, very funny. It's a pleasure to watch him larking about with the language... Brilliant" * The Times * "This new collection is a rambunctious return to the glory days of Trainspotting... Dazzlingly diverse... Sick and vigorous, written with Welsh's inimitable in-yer-face energy" * Sunday Telegraph * "This smutty, macabre collection exudes a compelling energy" * Daily Mail * "Scary, erotic and extremely funny" * Literary Review * --This text refers to an alternate kindleedition edition. BOOK DESCRIPTION
Five short stories: a man who has married his wife for money is murdered but his wife feels only relief; one man takes his poetry far, far too seriously; strange obsessions wreak unexpected havoc; a house sitter snooping for love letters unexpectedly finds dead woman; and a smoker can't quit smoking, nor can he quit scratching his mosquito bites. --This text refers to an alternate kindleedition edition. FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The author of Trainspotting gives a master class in gallows humor in his first story collection since The Acid House (1995) . Three of the five stories take place in the U.S., and Welsh relishes punishing ugly Americans. In Rattlesnakes, a trio of vapid hedonists lost in the desert are forced to perform sexually degrading acts by an unhinged illegal immigrant, while The DOGS of Lincoln Park finds a bitchy Chicago princess throwing a hissy fit over her missing papillon, Toto, who she fears has landed in her Korean neighbor's crock pot. Page-turners both, but the characters are too easily satirized. More likable is the narrator of Miss Arizona, an aspiring auteur whose interviews with his filmmaker hero's ex-wife turn increasingly creepy. Welsh shines in the title story, about an ex-pat skirt-chasing bar owner in the Canary Islands, and the novella, The Kingdom of Fife, set in a glum Scotland town. Narrative duties in the last are shared by wee Jason King, a former jockey and current compulsive masturbator and table football champion, and Jenni Cahill, a horse jumper and local gangster's daughter. That a story featuring a gruesome decapitation, dogfighting, equine death and rampant wanking can produce such an amiable effect is testament to Welsh's delightful degeneracy. (Sept.)
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Irvine Welsh is the author of Trainspotting, Ecstasy (in movie preproduction) , Glue, Porno, Filth, Marabou Stork Nightmares, and The Acid House. The screenwriter for Meat Trade, to star Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth, Welsh lives in Dublin. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more Continue reading Read less