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Filth [Paperback]

Irvine Welsh (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 21.95
Price: CDN$ 15.85 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
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Product Description

From Amazon

Talk about truth in advertising! Irvine Welsh's novel about an evil Edinburgh cop is filthy enough to please the most crud-craving fans of his blockbuster debut, Trainspotting. Like Trainspotting, Filth matches its nastiness with a maniacal, deeply peeved sense of humor. Though one does feel the need to escape this train wreck of a narrative from time to time for a shower and some chamomile tea, just as often Welsh provokes a belly laugh with an extraordinarily perverse and cruelly funny set piece. Nicely violent turns of phrase litter the ghastly landscape of his tale.

Our hero, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, is a cross between Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant and John Belushi in Animal House. His task is to nab a killer who has brained the son of the Ghanaian ambassador, but bigoted Bruce is more urgently concerned with coercing sex from teenage Ecstasy dealers, planning vice tours of Amsterdam, and mulling over his lurid love life. He's also got a tapeworm, whose monologue is printed right down the middle of many pages. Here's one of this unusually articulate parasite's realizations: "My problem is that I seem to have quite a simple biological structure with no mechanism for the transference of all my grand and noble thoughts into fine deeds."

Welsh's real strength is comic tough talk and inventive slang. The murder mystery helps organize his tendency to sprawl, but the engine of his art is wry, harsh dialogue. At one point, his books hogged the entire top half of Scotland's Top Ten Bestsellers list--and half the buyers of Trainspotting had never bought a book before. The reason is not that Welsh is the best novelist who ever got short-listed for the Booker Prize. It is that he is that rarest of phenomena, an original voice. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Another scabrous, lurid, blackly comic novel from America's favorite Scottish enfant terrible, this one does for present-day Edinburgh what James Ellroy does for 1950s Los Angeles. Welsh begins with a detective's investigation into a murder?the death of a Ghanaian ambassador's son?and turns it into a vivid exploration of the detective's own twisted psyche and seedy milieu. Detective Bruce Robertson finds himself preoccupied not with the murder but with his own genital eczema, sadistic sexual antics involving any number of girlfriends and prostitutes, his increasingly chronic appetite for coke, alcohol and greasy fast food and, finally, the parasite that has taken up residence in his intestines. Welsh effectively plays off Robertson's bilious narration with the coolly insistent voice of another entity?the tapeworm, who seems to be the repository of Robertson's childhood memories and what is left of his superego?as the detective spins out of control, wasting himself in increasingly risky games of erotic asphyxiation with one of his mistresses (ex-wife of another detective), machinations to undermine his colleagues, and misanthropic rage: "Criminals, spastics, niggers, strikers, thugs, I don't fucking well care, it all adds up to one thing: something to smash." Even for readers who have mastered Welsh's Scots dialect, such an eloquently nasty narrator can be exhausting. As in the past, Welsh himself sometimes seems rather compromised as a satirist by the glee he takes in his characters' repulsiveness. Yet if this hypnotic chronicle of moral and psychological ruin (funnier and far more accessible than Welsh's last full-length novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares) fails to charm a wide readership, it will not disappoint devotees. Editor, Gerald Howard; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

118 Reviews
5 star:
 (66)
4 star:
 (29)
3 star:
 (12)
2 star:
 (5)
1 star:
 (6)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (118 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most helpful customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Love Irvine Welsh.... Hated Filth, Jan 20 2009
By 
This review is from: Filth (Paperback)
Trainspotting is possibly my favorite novel of all time. Porno, although not as good was still an excellent read... but Filth was horrible. The characters are unbelievable, the dialog repetative and boring, and the story takes you nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Deeply disapointing from such a great author.
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5.0 out of 5 stars BEST BOOK EVER, Sep 11 2006
This review is from: Filth (Paperback)
No contest. Pure filth. I felt like I had been kicked in the kidneys by the end of it. Never had such an intense physical reaction to a book before. This has been my number one favourite book since it first came out and makes everything else I've read before or since look tame...and believe me I'm not into tame reading. Fabulous. I only wish all of Welsh's books had this intensity and gut-wrenching honesty. He writes about the things we often think but don't even like to admit to ourselves we think. A tip...find some Edinburgh scots & hang out with them for a few weeks before attempting to comprehend the phonetic Scottish style. You'd miss so much if you didn't understand alot of it. Totally worth it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, April 20 2006
By 
RB (Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Filth (Paperback)
Welsh's very best, in my opinion.

This novel takes us through the miserable life of a very dislikable lead character. Yet in spite of his repulsiveness, we are drawn to him through those things we can horrifyingly relate to in the darkest corners of our own character. He makes you feel - filthy.

However, the most accomplished and novel aspect of this book is the tapeworm. For those unfamiliar with such diseases, it is worth appreciating that it was well researched and the associated pathos was brilliantly orated as part of the narrative. While certainly an exploration of flawed humanity, on a much more sophisticated level it also contimplates the relationship between disease and self identity. Ultimately, this book is about relationships and the serendipitous, entangled ways in which they can both propagate and destroy an individual.

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