Trainspotting

Trainspotting

by Irvine Welsh

Reading on a plane can be a fun thing, especially when it’s not bumpy!  During my flight to Denver for ACUHO-I, I finished Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, a Scottish author.  The book is a series of short stories which are set in Scotland in the late 1980s at the height of the AIDS epidemic.  The stories all revolve around a group of friends, mostly drug addicts (heroin being the drug of choice), some of whom have contracted HIV.  The challenge of the book is reading the dialogue in a Celtic (cockney) dialect, which is hard to read for those who prefer “hardcore” English (dialects are not fun to interpret).  The stories follow the various outcomes of those who share needles and have sex with each other during a time of rapid infection within this community.  Abuse, neglect, and lack of self-worth were all apparent throughout.  The characters were real and the reader was drawn in to want to help them.  A pretty raw book.  Its author captured the feelings of fear, self-hate, and invincibility that led the characters to continue to make the choices that ultimately led to death.  Brutally honest, highlighting a community that needed their story told.