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Edinburgh author Irvine Welsh has admitted re-reading his own novel, Trainspotting, was a ‘horrible thing’.
The 66-year-old released Men In Love, a sequel to the hit book, in July. To ensure it was accurate he had to go back and read the first book in the series, reports the Daily Record.
Welsh found fame in 1993 thanks to the iconic novel, which tells the stories of a group of heroin addicts in 1980s Edinburgh. It was later adapted into a film, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle.
Men in Love carries on exactly where Trainspotting ended and features the same cast of main characters, but was written over 30 years later. Welsh, who says he forgets his books as soon as he completes them, said that reading previous work was “the worst thing you can possibly do”.
He told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival: “It’s horrible, a terrible thing. To read one of your own books is just the worst thing you can possibly do, but you have to do it.
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“If you’re doing a sequel or a prequel, you have to do it to make all these things work. There’s always somebody that says, ‘ah but he died in this other book’.
“Oh my God. You’re never going to catch them all, but you have to do as much as you can to build that kind of consistent narrative throughout.”
The sequel sees the main characters – Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy – looking for love. Welsh also revealed he has several favourites among his own novels — but did not include Trainspotting.
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He said: “I like Glue because it’s a big sprawling epic, and I kind of like Skag Boys, which is basically about how they got into that situation in the first place while Trainspotting is just a deep dive into that murky world.
“I like some of the later books like Dead Men’s Trousers, and I think A Decent Ride is the funniest one and so I’ve got different kinds of fondness for them all. I really liked Marabou Stork Nightmares at the time.
“It’s quite a difficult book to live with – it’s quite a harsh book in a lot of ways – and I kind of like Filth as well. I was going to say I like them all, but I kind of do because I wrote them all.”
