Children of Albion Rovers: New Scottish Writing

Hard-edged and iconoclastic, the new wave of Scottish writers and their godfather, Irvine Welsh, write a darkly funny brand of fiction about people on the fringes--junkies, soccer hooligans, ravers, working-class youth. This anthology of six full-length novellas features raw and exciting works by Welsh and such up-and-coming authors as Alan Warner, James Meek, Gordon Legge, and Laura J. Hird.

Stories by six young writers, the cream of the contemporary Scottish Beats crop, are anthologized here in a raw display of life on the edge. An excerpt from a 1991 novel by Alan Warner, here titled ``After the Vision,'' is the most successful of the lot, describing one man's long voyage home after a rave, a journey that touches bottom when he meets a long-lost mate who enthuses over his job at a crematorium, then begins slowly to rise when he meets two women who take him to their friend, who in turn offers him a couch for a much-needed night's sleep. Also funny and compelling is ``The Brown Pint of Courage,'' by James Meek, in which three bottom-rung members of Edinburgh's parking police force indulge in mayhem and coercion on the job--one even falling in love on his lunch break with a woman who shares his passion for Thomas Carlyle--before the good times come to an end in spectacular fashion. Other interesting stories by Laura J. Hird and Paul Reekie involve a teacher's nightlong seduction of his 16-year-old student, which doesn't go quite as he planned (``The Dilating Pupil''), and a chronicle of a generation finding its way in the world, narrated by a man recovering from burns received while sitting on a toilet that ignited (``Submission''). The most touted piece here, however, proves disappointing: Irvine Welsh's sci-fi spoof involving aliens and their command of Scots English (``The Rosewell Incident''), has a few laughs but not much else. The vision of Scottish life created by these six voices is remarkably consistent, vital, and unyieldingly tough-minded, but it's too early to say if these promising young writers will mature into major ones, or if they'll gain much of a foothold on these shores. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Urban Scottish grunge, which the hit movie Trainspotting made world famous, began as a literary phenomenon; six good examples of it make up this book. Gordon Legge's "Pop Life" leads off disarmingly, tracing the rock-centered friendship of Martin, Ray, and Hilly from their teens to their thirties, when, except for their records, they have little in common. The next three entries--a grimly humorous novel excerpt by Alan Warner, a Samuel Beckettish comedy about parking-ticket-writing traffic wardens by James Meek, and Paul Reekie's "Submission," a poet-intellectual's raffishly disgusting letter to a younger writer--are more what one expects: the drink-and-drug-sodden capers of various lumpen types. A schoolteacher's willing seduction by a curvaceous teen goes awry in Laura J. Hird's "The Dilating Pupil," and aliens under the influence of an Edinburgh street tough try to take over the world in "The Rosewell Incident" by Irvine Welsh, author of the novel Trainspotting. Brutal, funny stuff, like James Kelman's Busted Scotch. Ray Olson