SOURCE: “Needles and Sins,” in New Republic, Vol. 215, No. 4,259, September 2, 1996, pp. 31–4.

In the following review of Trainspotting, Mendelson focuses on the maturation of Welsh's protagonist Renton. Mendelson also discusses Welsh's use of irony and compares Trainspotting to both J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and James Joyce's Dubliners.

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh's novel about heroin addicts in Edinburgh, arrives from Britain with much fanfare, due primarily to the simultaneous release of the movie based on the book. Critics have claimed that the film “glorifies” the use of heroin, and some have said this about the book. I haven’t seen the movie, but the novel is not an encouragement to start shooting up. Welsh writes with a wit that's calculatedly outrageous, and his main character, Mark Renton, can be winningly sarcastic, especially when he's in need of a fix; but this does not make the book an...