Resumo de Trainspotting

Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. Originally a collection of loosely related short stories, it revolves around a group of heroin addicts in Leith and Edinburgh, and is set in the mid to late 1980s.It charts the first phase of the HIV epidemic as well as exploring the broader social conditions of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. This picaresque novel operates in the literary traditions established by William Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Hubert Selby, among others. Its tone ranges from cynical black comedy to visceral horror to genuine empathy for its characters. Trainspotting was adapted, by Harry Gibson, into a play.The novel quickly found success with middlebrow and mass audiences alike. It was longlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize(and was apparently rejected for the shortlist after offending the?feminist sensibilities? of two of the judges (Purlock, 1996)) andreceived even wider attention once the film of the same name appeared in 1996, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle. A sequel to this novel, called Porno, was published in 2002.Non-native English speakers might find the language in this book rather challenging as it is partly written in a phonetic rendering of urban Scots.The title is a reference to an episode where Begbie and Renton meet "an auld drunkard" in the disused Leith Central railway station, which they are visiting to use as a toilet. He asks them (in a weak attempt at a joke) if they are "trainspottin". As they walk away, Renton realises the drunk was Begbie's father. The novel is split up into seven sections: the first six containmultiple chapters of varying length and differing focus. The novel'sorigins in short fiction are still visible though no segment or chapteris wholly independent of the others.Each character narrates differently, in a fashion comparable to stream-of-consciousness or representative of psychological realism.For example, Spud will refer to people internally as 'cats' (Begbie isa jungle cat, while he himself is a house cat), and Sick Boy willoccasionally entertain an inner-dialogue between himself and Sean Connery.Chapters narrated by Renton are written phonetically, conveying a thickScottish accent, while Davie's chapters ("Bad Blood", "TraditionalSunday Breakfast") are narrated in Standard Englishwith dialogue appearing phonetically. Other chapters are written from a3rd person omniscient stance (in Standard English) to cover the actionsand thoughts of different characters simultaneously. For example, "TheFirst Shag in Ages" covers Spud and Renton's outing to a pub where theymeet Dianne and her pal, followed by Renton's return to Dianne's andthe awkward breakfast that ensues, all the while revealing what eachcharacter thinks of the other.

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