Book #41

Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh

With three delightful tales of love and its ups and downs, the ever-surprising Irvine Welsh virtually invents a new genre of fiction: the chemical romance.

You all know how I feel about Welsh. His crass, brazen stories filled with shock, drugs, and all kinds of abuse, absolutely thrill and delight me. Every new release of his I will devour rather than savour, subsequently churning out reviews filled with crazed praise and fangirl ramblings. This time I decided to go back to his earlier work and treat myself to something more raw and rough.

Ecstasy is comprised of three short stories, all in relation to chemical romances and relationships. This is the only vein running through the three; they are incredibly unlike each other, and all brought something original to the table.

There's a certain feel to Welsh short stories which is far lighter and less fucked up than his novels. They're nice for a quick injection, and something to go to when you're not quite in the mood to have your heed blown off your shoulders into pitch black darkness. Although Ecstasy gives us (amongst other things) Austen-esque pornography, beastiality, necrophilia, deformity, and child dismemberment, we end on an ecstasy high of two people falling in love. And despite me relishing the necrophilia more particularly, love is what it's all about.

You're uncomfortable, it's grim, some of the plot twists and situations will either give you a mindfuck or the boke, but it's so good. If you're too lazy to read and interpret Scot's dialect, you are an arsehole and you have my pity.

Although I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point for Welsh beginners, it's twisted, it's clatty as fuck, and it's the boy's true early stuff. Canny beat it.