Irvine Welsh is a highly-rated Scottish author who gave us the Trainspotting novel, from whence came the great yet disgusting Ewan MacGregor film, then wrote Filth. This is an absolutely Post Modern novel, completely with anti-hero and literary invention. Welsh attempts to climb a high mountain but in the end I think he never quite makes the summit even though the book is worth a read if you’re of such a mind. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson is our boy, nasty, scheming, hateful, a cop in Edinburgh whose last month on Earth we live together as he investigates a strange murder, takes a sex and drugs vacation in Amsterdam, and plots to destroy his rivals for promotion.
As is popular in the British Isles these days, the dialog is written as it sounds rather than in the Queen’s English–doesna for does not, shite for shit, hoor for whore–which can make comprehension a little difficult for these American eyes. Further, the only two characters we hear from directly other than Robertson (or dialog for which he is present) are a tapeworm living in his gut, somehow not only self-aware but with access to Robertson’s deeply buried childhood memories, and a few interludes purporting to be from his wife Carol, though I have my doubts on who is really doing the speaking. Carol’s expositions are printed in bold for some unknown reason, as their own chapters more or less, and the tapeworm’s dialog is embedded in the flow of the novel, sort of overprinted on the text. Hard to describe, it’s very visual.
Mean and dangerous to any and all as Robertson is, in the end he turns out to only hate himself. This is mainly revealed by the tapeworm and a key reason for my previous statement that Welsh does not quite reach the summit in this effort. The story, the character, keeps one’s attention to the end, but the tapeworm just goes the easy and obvious route to explain the pain that drives our anti-hero. Plus, for a long time, the reader has no clue who or what is interrupting the story in this strange way, it just appears with a repetition of 0’s and the word eat interspersed in them. An ambitious effort, not to be dismissed lightly.
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