Dead Men's Trousers

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After the meal prepared by Sharon and Marina, we’re kicking back in the cosy cramp of this small room, and the drinks slip down nicely. One of the pictures at Begbie's art exhibition is a painting of Jimmy Savile with his eyes gouged out. At his best, he manages a sort of ragged glory, a life-affirming comic energy combined with a sense of horror or desperation and the ability to place his lowlife shenanigans in a wider thematic or social context. Set in 2015, it follows the characters Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie as they meet up again as middle-aged men. He added that "by the end, what could've been a fitting, apt, even startling counterweight to Trainspotting has been weighed down with so much awkward sex, so many grown men on drugs and so many antic, unlikely capers, that the great idea Welsh had at the beginning has been lost".

I think it would have been utterly unrealistic to expect another Trainspotting - even though the 4 guys stay true to who they are as people, it would have been weird to find them in the same situations 20 years down the line. It is these three characters that really make the book an enjoyable ride, and a fitting conclusion to one of the greatest literary saga I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying. While indeed this is number three, after Porno (which was loosely "adapted" into the T2 film), there is also the Skag Boys prequel.Scenes of violence are graphic and prolonged, perhaps worsened by the implication that “they deserved it”. Much of the book feels a fair bit kore tense and high stakes than previous entries and from around a third of the way in I just didn't want to put it down. The central quartet of characters – Renton, Begbie, Sick Boy and Spud – are back, and there are cameos from the priapic cabbie Terry Lawson ( Glue and A Decent Ride) and, off stage, from the Miami fitness trainer Lucy Brennan ( The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins).

For all we know, there's yet another episode in the works, and the split between the pure literary and entertaining will be even wider.

The characters stitch one another up, take revenge, bond again in a burst of drunken sentimentality – and rinse and repeat. My old boy still has a decent posture to him, broad-shouldered, if a little bent over, not too much muscle wastage in evidence. DMT—Dead Men's Trousers/ Danny Murphy's a twat/Dimethyltryptamine—is one of the very few books which actually gave me heartful laughter. I’m with my dad, my sister-in-law Sharon, and my niece Marina and her infant twin boys Earl and Wyatt, who look indentical but have different personalities.