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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The author of Trainspotting gives a master class in gallows humor in his first story collection since The Acid House (1995). Three of the five stories take place in the U.S., and Welsh relishes punishing ugly Americans. In Rattlesnakes, a trio of vapid hedonists lost in the desert are forced to perform sexually degrading acts by an unhinged illegal immigrant, while The DOGS of Lincoln Park finds a bitchy Chicago princess throwing a hissy fit over her missing papillon, Toto, who she fears has landed in her Korean neighbor's crock pot. Page-turners both, but the characters are too easily satirized. More likable is the narrator of Miss Arizona, an aspiring auteur whose interviews with his filmmaker hero's ex-wife turn increasingly creepy. Welsh shines in the title story, about an ex-pat skirt-chasing bar owner in the Canary Islands, and the novella, The Kingdom of Fife, set in a glum Scotland town. Narrative duties in the last are shared by wee Jason King, a former jockey and current compulsive masturbator and table football champion, and Jenni Cahill, a horse jumper and local gangster's daughter. That a story featuring a gruesome decapitation, dogfighting, equine death and rampant wanking can produce such an amiable effect is testament to Welsh's delightful degeneracy. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
These five stories remind us that Welsh is a master of the shorter form, a brilliant storyteller and, unarguably, one of the funniest and filthiest writers alive.
In Rattlesnakes, when three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, how is it that one find himself performing fallatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline and two armed Mexicans?
Who is the mysterious Korean chef who has moved in with Chicago socialite Kendra Cross, in The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park, and what does he have to do with the disappearance of her faithful pooch, Toto?
In the title story, can Mickey Baker, an English bar-owner on the Costa Brava, manage to keep all his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid Teresa’s body weight at the sexual maximum while attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his persistent ex-wife and a pair of Spanish gangsters?
In Miss Arizona, Raymond Wilson Butler is writing a biography of a legendary U.S. movie director. By what train of events does he end up as a piece of movie memorabilia?
And how, in The Kingdom of Fife, will Jason King — diminutive ex-trainee jockey and Subbuteo star of Cowdenbeath — fare in the world of middle-class female equestrians?
In Rattlesnakes, when three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, how is it that one find himself performing fallatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline and two armed Mexicans?
Who is the mysterious Korean chef who has moved in with Chicago socialite Kendra Cross, in The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park, and what does he have to do with the disappearance of her faithful pooch, Toto?
In the title story, can Mickey Baker, an English bar-owner on the Costa Brava, manage to keep all his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid Teresa’s body weight at the sexual maximum while attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his persistent ex-wife and a pair of Spanish gangsters?
In Miss Arizona, Raymond Wilson Butler is writing a biography of a legendary U.S. movie director. By what train of events does he end up as a piece of movie memorabilia?
And how, in The Kingdom of Fife, will Jason King — diminutive ex-trainee jockey and Subbuteo star of Cowdenbeath — fare in the world of middle-class female equestrians?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Jock in America, Nov 28 2007
By Cliff Burns - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: If You Liked School, You'll Love Work (Paperback)
I'm a big fan of Mr. Welsh's work, it displays an exuberance and lust for language that's intoxicating. IF YOU LIKED SCHOOL...is a bit of a misfire, a collection of stories of uneven quality. The problem is, the author decided to set some of his tales in America and tried to adopt or, more rightly, imitate American speech patterns and accents. The weakest story, "Miss Arizona" is particularly guilty of this offense and the resolution to this tale is so weak, predictable and derivative,you wonder what the writer was thinking. The closing novella, "Kingdom of Fife", finds the author back on familiar ground, hobnobbing with losers and thugs and sex maniacs, the brogue so thick and heavy it's like reading CANTERBURY TALES in the original Olde English (and nearly as rewarding). "Fife" is vintage Irvine Welsh--he's not posing or pretending, he's telling it like it is, the only way he knows how.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bad, Feb 6 2008
By F. L. Smith - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: If You Liked School, You'll Love Work (Paperback)
This is the first Irvine Welsh book I've struggled to finish. The stories are trite, the attempt at capturing American accents falls flat and overall the whole thing just seems...uninspired.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A slight return to form for Welsh, Nov 3 2007
By Munko McCentral "Munko" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: If You Liked School, You'll Love Work (Hardcover)
I read Welsh's last book ('Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs') and was disappointed. With 'If you liked school...' he returns to good form a wee bit. The short stories are set in America and I can take or leave them, although they have their moments. As a Scot living in America, the dialect/accent that he gives the American characters made me squirm at times. The stories aren't his best writing, but there's some twists. The book is worth buying for the novella, set in Cowdenbeath. A breath of fresh air, moving away from his usual settings of Leith and Edinburgh. Interesting characters and a good bit of dialect and humour.
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