Jon Lymon Reviews Men in Love by Irvine Welsh

Yes, it’s a sequel, but not a masculine focused follow-up to DH Lawrence’s 1920 novel Women In Love. Far, far from it.

Irvine Welsh revisits the characters from his iconic Trainspotting, just a few months after the end of that novel and a few months before the start of the 1990s.

And while I thought Mark Renton, who seemed to steal leading character status in the Trainspotting film would be the focus here, it’s actually Sick Boy’s (mis)adventures that drive most of the compelling narrative.

Residual bitterness at Renton’s actions remain, but by and large, Sick Boy doesn’t let that dampen his libido, to the extent that he lucks out when he meets rich girl Amanda in drug rehab and uses his charm to weave his way into her life, much to the disgust of her government-employed well-off and well-to-do father, GODfrey (his caps, not mine).

But it was the chapters narrated by Francis James Begbie that stole the show for me. This rather aggressive chap played so brilliantly by Robert Carlyle in the films, is most definitely not over Renton’s actions and he lets everyone know about it.

The language is coarse of course, particularly when this character’s aboot, but kudos to Welsh’s command of English which delights time and time again, although I’m not sure what the quotes from Wordsworth, Coleridge et al at the start of the chapters added.

A bigger but far from terminal gripe lies in what we don’t get at the end, and I won’t say any more than that, because I want you to buy and read this, almost as much as I want you to buy a read anything that has ‘by Jon Lymon’ on the cover.

As has been my experience reading Welsh (Irvine) there’s so much to delight and disgust. Checking back in with the Leith boys is a trip down not Memory Lane but Nostalgia Row – with Spud enjoying a fair bit of coverage, but Renton not as much as you might expect.

Men in Love comes highly, highly recommended by Jon Lymon, although with T2 Trainspotting having already been filmed and tracing the lives of these characters long after the events of Men In Love, it’s difficult to see how any movie of this could ever happen.

Find out more about Men in Love.