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With three wickedly funny and harrowing tales of love and its ups and downs, the ever-surprising Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, virtually re-invents a new genre of fiction: the chemical romance. In "Lorraine goes to Livingston," a best-selling author of Regency romances, paralysed and bedridden, plans her revenge on a gambling, whoring husband with the aid of her nurse, Lorraine. In "Fortunes's Always Hiding," flawed beauty Samantha Worthington enlists a smitten young soccer thug to find the man who marketed the drug that crippled her from birth - in order to give him a taste of his own disastrous medicine. In the upbeat final tale, "The Undefeated," we experience the transfiguring passion of the miserably married young yuppie Heather and the raver Lloyd from Leith - a grand affair played out to a house music beat.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The ecstasy involved in rave-writer Welsh's three novellas at first may seem exclusively the chemical kind ("e," "ecky," "MDMA") downed at Dionysian dance parties by alienated post-Thatcher youth and nearly every character here. But Welsh's latest misfits are also looking (however incoherently) for a higher ecstasy too: in a half-articulated credo, one eckied-out character thinks: "you had to party harder than ever.... It was your duty to show that you were still alive. Political sloganeering and posturing meant nothing; you had to celebrate the joy of life." Meantime, though, they are hooked on other drugs, petty crime, pub brawls, casual/kinky sex and bodice-buster novels. "Lorraine Goes to Livingston: A Rave and Regency Romance," the weakest of the three novellas, mixes Will Self-style grotesque social satire with an increasingly sick parody of trashy paperbacks. Welsh's own version of true love goes even farther over the top in "Fortune's Always Hiding" as a sociopathic Cockney criminal falls for a woman deformed by a thalidomide-like drug and they take gruesome revenge on its corporate manufacturers. The last and best, "The Undefeated," presents modern love in Edinburgh as a "chemical romance" between the party-addict Lloyd, whose acidified life consists only of weekend house bashes, and straight-peg Heather, who trades her bougie existence for e. Ecstasy exports Welsh's pitch-perfect slang, black humor and surreal imagination in an exhilarating, mutable style like the written equivalent of techno music, cutting right through to his characters' lives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welsh in top form,
By
This review is from: Ecstasy : Three Tales of Chemical Romance (Paperback)
Sometimes when writers venture into the area of the short story their craft suffers from cut corners and unanswered questions. That may be the case in Ecstacy, but if it is I was too engrossed to notice the flaws. "Lorraine Goes to Livingston" deals with a writer who concocts a plan to strike revenge at her cheating husband. "Fortune's Always Hiding" explores the twisted relationship between a soccer hooligan and a deformed but beautiful women. "The Undefeated" is the tale of two polar opposites finding love somewhere in the middle.The best things about this collection are: 1) the stories get progressively better - "The Undefeated" is by far the best; 2) three kinds of love are detailed; and 3) it proves that love can destroy any boundaries. I know that last one sounds sappy but it's true enough. Once again Welsh has assembled a strong cast of characters and thrown them into extraordinary circumstances. What you get is one helluva ride.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Totally worth the wait...,
By Amy L Rietzke (Oak Ridge, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ecstasy : Three Tales of Chemical Romance (Paperback)
I waited to read this book for 2 years, and when i finally got this book, I started to read it right away. My favourite short story was "The Undefeated", in which raver Lloyd falls for a yuppie Heather. The book contains 3 short stories. "Lorraine Goes to Livingston" is a great tale of revenge and love found and lost. "Fortune's Always Hiding" is a total Welsh-ian story of "love" and corporate greed. I love this book, the language, the humour, and the sheer simplicity of the overall stories. These tales make a reader want to read more and more.
2.0 out of 5 stars
ugh.,
By youhas (places) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ecstasy : Three Tales of Chemical Romance (Paperback)
first of all, look at the cover for this book.that's about as enertaining as things are going to get. this book is "trainspotting" in condensed form and welsh at his most pretentious.
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