Corner of Chaos
Created | Updated Oct 13, 2005
Glue - Irvine Welsh
glue: gloo, n. an impure gelatine got by boiling animal refuse, used as an adhesive.
The exams were over, prom had just finished and I'd danced the night away with various friends and that very special lady in my life. The long, long summer of roughly three months was ahead of me before I needed to venture up from just outside London, in Essex, all the way up to Glasgow for university, and I needed something to fill my time. What better to do, I thought, than reading the books I wanted to read after a thoroughly tough time of having them dictated to me? Well, I aimed to read about 12 books, but in the event only managed to muster the entire Hitchhiker's trilogy of five, Past Mortem,
American Psycho and then Glue. Still, eight out of twelve ain't bad, as Meat Loaf might be moved to say. The last of the lot, Glue, was a distinctly apt choice as it was set in Scotland, my destination, though mainly in Edinburgh, which was not.
I had bought the book many years earlier, when it was first published, on the strength of Filth — a book I would probably recommend more. But is about 400 miles south of me right now, so I will save that for another day. Having read about halfway through the book I gave up, due to a lack of interest, a newly born social life and, most importantly, the fact that I was barely 14 and most of the text was way over my head. But now I was 18 and, being the pompous person that I am, I believed that steeled me well enough for the task of this book, that spans roughly 40 years of the life of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh schemes, a large housing estate which was not altogether very
pleasant to live in. In ten-year intervals, from 1970 to 2000 — and an epilogue in 2002 — Welsh accounts for the four boys: Juice Terry, a work shy boozer with more than a passing interest in the fairer sex; Billy 'Business' Birrel, a quiet and controlled athlete; Carl Ewart, aka the 'Milky Bar Kid', aka DJ N-SIGN, obsessed with music, drifting along to his own tune; and Andy 'Gally' Galloway', loving the world more than himself but entwined with tragedy.
His narrative following the latter half of the century, Welsh offers his own commentary on a wide array of subjects. The bare basics of it all shows four lads growing up in a very boyish manner: nervous about staying virgins forever, going to football matches and getting in fights, hating school, parents and more. But on another level, this novel shows how much the country has changed politically, from the power of the blue collar class in the 1970s through to Thatcher's government and the supposed lies of New Labour, leaving us with a country of tertiary industries as the new millenium begins. American influence is everywhere, destroying Scottish culture. However, though Welsh may sound like he is being the typical Generation X ranter in this novel, he subtly places the idea that the love of the past and hatred of the new is merely nostalgia attacking us. The golden age was never there, it was always expected to be around the corner and whenever we read of how good the past used to be, it is normally from the perspective of one of the four boys who are either drugged up or thoroughly annoyed at the time. Their opinions change more times than the direction of the wind, and perhaps Welsh is trying to inflict a carpe diem mentality upon us.
Whether his moral message is worthy or not, the book is still as funny and entertaining, as it should be. There are enough twists and turns, combined with various types of humour — from slapstick to observational — to keep a reader interested, so long as they do not mind reading nearly 500 pages of Scottish dialect. Thankfully, I was already used to Welsh's use of Edinburgh's accent and slang through Filth, but if you are not, it might take a while to become accustomed to it. Though Filth is far funnier and more hard-hitting and Trainspotting is clearly Welsh's best-known piece, Glue is an attempt at a modern epic, written across 40 years and with a large selection of characters who pop up everywhere. It is definitely worth a read for its black humour and sour, yet celebratory, depiction of the human existence.
