Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance

when people speak of shock writers Welsh is brought up for good reson... his stories are like seeing a car accident... you don't want to look but something tell you that you must... his stories twist and turn, and so do the characters, through hospitals, clubs and the streets of England. Americans be warned this is a book sometimes hard to follow because of the diction... but as in all of his work, Welsh will leave you speechless in the end.

Sometimes when writers venture into the area of the short story their craft suffers from cut corners and unanswered questions. That may be the case in Ecstacy, but if it is I was too engrossed to notice the flaws. "Lorraine Goes to Livingston" deals with a writer who concocts a plan to strike revenge at her cheating husband. "Fortune's Always Hiding" explores the twisted relationship between a soccer hooligan and a deformed but beautiful women. "The Undefeated" is the tale of two polar opposites finding love somewhere in the middle. Each story is a quick read, but not for lack of plot or charater development. With a few sentences Welsh makes these miscreants/victims into three-dimensional people; it often feels as if the reader is somehow intruding into these people's lives. And each novella gets increasingly better. "The Undefeated" is probably the best of the bunch though the novel-within-a-novella excerpts and deviant sexual debauchery from "Lorraine Goes to Livingston" and the horrific mutilations (horrific but not explicitly graphic) in "Fortune's Always Hiding" also stand out as interesting highlights. Once again Welsh has assembled a strong cast of characters and thrown them into extraordinary circumstances. What you get is one helluva ride.

I'd heard this collection of "three tales of chemical imbalance" weren't so good, so it was a pleasant surprise to find myself quite enjoying them all. Within each of the three "stories" there are multiple plot lines running with entertaining characters abounding. A listing of the subtitle of each story hints at this: "A Rave and Regency Romance," "A Corporate Drug Romance" and "An Acid House Romance." Amok with explicit drugs and sex, these are clearly love stories for youth, and yet they all celebrate rather traditional notions of love and falling in love. I found the combination very pleasing, although others might find it a bit forced perhaps even cheezy. What is lacking is the dense dialect of Trainspotting which might make it more accessible reading for some.

I can't understand the negative reviews that this book generated, because I found it amazing! The last of the 3 stories, "The Undefeated", was my favorite of any of his stories, blending interesting characters, Welsh's efflusive drug references, and a happy ending little seen in his other works. All three were very strong tales, with mininal throwaway, unlike the volume "The Acid House", which was more uneven. Welsh fans should love this..I did.

The author of Trainspotting, which became a major movie hit this winter, brings us three provocative and sometimes beautiful love stories in his newest novel, Ecstasy. The first story, "Lorraine Goes to Livingston: A Rave and Regency Romance," is about Rebecca, the oblivious romance novelist, Perky, her adulterous worm of a husband, Lorraine, a part-time raver/part-time nurse, and Freddy Royle, a necrophilic. It is full of relationships starting and ending, self-awareness (or the lack of) and is shocking and entertaining. But then again, how could a nice love story with bouts of bestiality and necrophilia be boring? In "Fortune's Always Hiding: A Corporate Drug Romance" a nasty pharmaceutical company markets a little-tested drug, Tenazadrine, which produces results not unlike the birth defects caused by Thalidomide in the`50s and `60s. This is probably the most disturbing story in Ecstasy, and leaves you pondering the fine line between justice and revenge. You won't know what to think of Dave, whose loyalty and love for his deformed girlfriend, Samantha, tries to compensate for his less desirable traits such as violence and homophobia. The third, and last, story will blow your mind like double-dipped tabs of LSD. "The Undefeated: An Acid House Romance" is both funny and clever. Lloyd Buist, a laid-back druggie, is endearing with his Alice In Wonderland-esque logic ("Ah don't know if I'm thinking this or saying it or both at the same time, but you can sometimes say one thing while thinking another. So if I'm saying this, actually saying this out loud, what am ah thinking? Eh? Ah ha!"). This is the perfect book to save you from summertime apathy. Ecstasy is a must read for those who dn't mind deciphering European English (what the hell do sentences like "Ah'm away doon tae the deli fir mair ay they strawberries, eh" mean?) and are not offended by profanity, drug use and sex.