By the author of "Trainspotting"...!
This is NOT a sequel; but a further exploration of some of Trainspotting's motives and themes.
This book contains three stories, which are all centered around young people and their experiences with (or without) drugs.
Warning! you should not read this if you are under 18 years old! And take care not to pass it on to minors...!!!
So I won't tell you about the contents of the stories here; but I can assure you that, after having passed the first wave of shock, it's a really amusing read...
Contains some passages of really black humour... So, if you like the feeling of indecision, whether to laugh outright or to weep, this is the right book for you!!

The Ring is about to start now.
I had to make slight alterations concerning its traveling route; because two of you asked me to do so. the participants so far:

1) hank-chinaski Bielefeld
2) Lisa-B Riedstadt
3) booberst Rostock
4) KatiDieRaupe Heidelberg
5) tiger-kuh-katze Hannover.

Enjoy this , and prepare yourselves for one roller-coaster-ride of a book :-))

RELEASE NOTES:

I mailed this book out today to hank-chinaski.
all the best for the voyage; make him laugh and weep just like me...

Came with the mail today, great many thanx to rumble-bee! I had no idea I'd be the first in the list when I applied for this bookring and I'm afraid it's gonna mess up my reading schedule, but then I've always stuck to the rule never to reject a good book... ;-)

What a book! Ah must apologize fer keeping it so long, but ah had loads of work tae do recently, and then ah found the first story a wee bit difficult tae git intae and eywis seemed tae find something else tae read (which isnae too surprising given the selection waiting on Mt.TBR...). Anyway, once ah got the idea, ah jist couldnae put it down. Three stories of chemical romance indeed, and each of them got its own merits and each of them's fucking brilliant! The first one's the Thelma & Louise sorta thing, two lassies taking revenge but, ken? It's hilarious and probably the funniest Welsh has ever written. The second's aboot revenge as well, but it's more Bonnie & Clyde, and with its distinct air of doom and tragedy it's me own personal favorite. Finally we've got Romeo & Juliet all eckied up, by literary standards probably the best of them all. Unlike many of his other books, in these stories there's a continuous flow of action and Welsh comes as close to conventional story-telling as ever, so if you've never read anything by him, this book may well be the one to begin with.

Ah always liked Newcastle. Geordies are just Scots who can't blame the English for them being fucked up, the poor cunts.

Off by snailmail to Lisa-B, enjoy!

Gestern angekommen. Vielen Dank!

I enjoyed Ecstasy very much! Lots of humor and real characters, although I guess I missed quite a lot, due to the fact that it was not exactly an easy read.

arrived today. thanks.

edit: [irgendwie muss das buch hier untergegangen sein]

easy to read but i missed a lot. nice short stories, nut not the thing i exspected... will be a runaway soon.

it's on its way now...

Huuuch ..... gerade gestern hab ich booberst nochmal wegen dem Buch angefragt ... und heute wars in meinem Briefkasten????? .... Anyways, auf jeden Fall ist es nicht verloren gegangen, was ich schon befürchtet hatte. Kommt oben auf meine TBR-Stapel.

Tja, nu liegt es hier, fast hätte ich vergessen, 'nen Eintrag zu machen. Dank an Katie für's Schicken. Ich versuche danach nochmal tkk zu erreichen...

@Katie: menno, sag doch mal was dazu!

How to or when read a book like this? It’s been lying here for plenty of weeks, and I already asked for rumblebees adress to mail it back homewards. I tried to start reading several times, but none of the stories really hit me. Best I could get from, was the funny imagination of that fuckin’ol’son of a bitch Dennis Hopper speaking very realistically to me in the background... no fun at all. *veg*

Normally writers like Welsh, Ellis, Bukowski don’t fit in my personal family scedule, but if things are getting worse and harder, I place myself in my tub and start reading a dosis of this kind of literature. I prefer reading it as a sort of medicine, maybe you might say drug, that makes me feel better while surfing through the pages. Since the last two weeks had some of the blackest days ever climaxed by the funeral of a nice old neighbour Lady, today it felt somehow necsessary to heaten the water and spent an extensive time in the bathroom cunsuming a little bit of "Ecstasy".

And it worked! Thanx to Flossie and Freddy and friends, they really made my day, made me smile! It's so good to see that somewhere life is even harder. *gg* I try to work myself through the other two stories this weekend and send the back to you, rumblebee, at beginning of the next week. Thanks for sharing it.

So, nachdem ich mich am Freitag herrlich über den perversen Ringelreihen der ersten Kurzgeschichte gegackert habe, hat mich die zweite doch auch noch angenehm überrascht. Dass Contergan auch in England ein Thema mit Brisanz war, war mir gar nicht geläufig. Ganz ohne Pathos und Gedöns, dafür mit Authentizität und interessanten Lösungen, hab ich sie jedenfalls in einem Stück verschlungen. Die dritte Geschichte verweigere ich jetzt mal ganz frech, da sie mir mit diesen abwertenden Frauenklassifizierungen am Anfang auf den Sack, den nicht vorhandenen geht, ist wohl eher was für Jungs. Frau Wu hat jetzt jedenfalls genug fucking Welsh gehabt.

Hübsch fand ich: I mean, I ain't saying that Hitler necessarily had it right, mind you. It ain't his fault, he wasn't an Englishman. *rofl*

Tschüß Buch, war nett, Dich hier gehabt zu haben. Danke rumblebee, nun ist es schon auf dem Weg zurück zu Dir.

The book has arrived home safely.
Thanks everyone for your comments, and for your handling it so well (the book, not the comments!!)

If anyone else should wish to read it, just send me a message.