Porno (Paperback)

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

After his star rose in the mid 1990s, Irvine Welsh's novels, while dividing critics, have garnered much attention, but his latest is a publisher's wet dream: Porno is the sequel to Trainspotting. No manuscript is currently available but the book will see Sick Boy return to Edinburgh after an unsuccessful period in 'business' (read pimp and hustler) in London. Back home, he's got a new plan to make money which involves the production of a porn film. Cue the introduction of Nicola Fuller-Smith, the book's very own Sick Girl and object of his desire, as well as the reintroduction of Renton, the increasingly unhinged Begbie and a still drug-addled Spud. A guaranteed success and a long-term one as the team behind the Trainspotting movie are likely to adapt this sequel.

UK Kirkus review

Porno picks up where Trainspotting left off, reuniting the same motley crew of drug addicts, chancers, reprobates and hustlers ten years on. Spud is trying to kick the habit. Begbie is about to come out of prison, where he has, to his great consternation, been receiving regular packages of gay porn from an anonymous 'benefactor'. Meanwhile Sick Boy (the benefactor in question) returns from London to take over his aunt's pub in a none-too-salubrious part of Leith, and in one final, mad fling of the dice, decides to try his hand at directing porno movies. He enlists the services of the lovely Nikki Fuller-Smith, a lithe young film student whose ambition (and libido) matches his own, and who, between delivering hand-jobs in a local massage parlour, dreams of making a non-exploitative sex film. On a trip to Amsterdam (to check out the competition) they run into Sick Boy's old friend/new enemy, Renton, who, you may recall, ran off at the end of Trainspotting with the gang's ill-gotten gains. While all is not exactly forgiven, Sick Boy counts Renton in on the action and together they await the inevitable showdown with Begbie. That Welsh would eventually return to the psychotic but loveable characters of Trainspotting seems, on reflection, all too predictable. He hasn't managed anything as satisfying, as complete, since. Once again, the multiple narrators are skilfully (re)introduced, with Sick Boy and Nikki providing much-needed relief from the phonetically rendered, expletive-laden dialect of Spud and Begbie. Cocaine, rather than heroin, is the drug of choice here, but then drugs come a poor second to sex in this sequel. The heady cocktail of bad language, pornography and relentless drug abuse won't win any new converts, but for those who enjoyed Trainspotting, it's like meeting up with an old friend. You laugh and remember the good times, decide after a while that they've grown boring and complacent, but stay until closing time anyway. (Kirkus UK)