MEN IN LOVE

Welsh’s infamous crew of reprobates have shaken off junk, but not their bad habits.

This novel, the latest in a series featuring a group of heroin addicts in Edinburgh, Scotland, is set in the late 1980s and early ’90s, immediately after the events of Trainspotting (1993). Mark Renton, the smartest and savviest of the bunch, has absconded to Amsterdam with money from a busted drug deal. His friends are understandably furious, but don’t know his whereabouts. Chapters shift focus among all members of the group, but Welsh trains his lens most often on Mark, who falls for a young hotel staffer named Monique Van Beekhof while he integrates himself into Amsterdam’s dance club scene, and Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson, who’s smitten with Amanda Coningsby, the daughter of a wealthy, well-connected family, whom he meets in a recovery support group. When Amanda gets pregnant, Simon is initially moved to press for an abortion, but a nesting urge kicks in and they decide instead to marry. Domesticity is dodgy with this crowd, though; Simon’s idea of settling down is launching a career as a porn director, and hotheaded Francis Begbie is clean but still pugnacious. Welsh’s Trainspotting series has some common elements—thick Scottish burrs, overindulgence, comically ill-thought-through moneymaking schemes. Here, Welsh’s treatment feels at once exhausted and overextended, with the main plot pushing to Simon’s wedding, the inevitable culture clash at Amanda’s tony Surrey manse, and a comic attempt to find Mark. Those cliched, overlong plotlines overwhelm a more sophisticated one involving Mark’s frustration with Monique’s polyamory, and his determination to succeed while laying low. Welsh’s affection for his characters is clear, and his grasp of boyish humor remains intact, but five novels in, he’s drained this series of novelty.

A logorrheic recycling of bad-boy tropes.