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If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

By Irvine Welsh

(16)

| Paperback | 9780224075886

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Book Description

In his first short-story collection since "The Acid House", Irvine Welsh sets us five tricky questions. In 'Rattlesnakes' how do three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, and why does one find himself performing fellatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline anContinue

In his first short-story collection since "The Acid House", Irvine Welsh sets us five tricky questions. In 'Rattlesnakes' how do three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, and why does one find himself performing fellatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline and two armed Mexicans? Who is the mysterious Korean chef who has moved upstairs to Chicago socialite Kendra Cross, in 'The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park', and what does he have to do with the disappearance of her faithful pooch Toto? In the title story, can Mickey Baker - an expat English bar-owner ducking and diving on the Costa Brava - manage to keep all his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid Cynthia's body weight at the sexual maximum while attending to the youthful Persephone and dodging his persistent ex-wife and a pair of Spanish gangsters? By what train of events does Raymond Wilson Butler, writing a biography of a legendary US film director in "Miss Arizona" come to end up as a piece of movie memorabilia? And how, in the novella "The Kingdom of Fife" will Jason King - diminutive ex-trainee jockey and Subbuteo star of Cowdenbeath - fare in the world of middle-class female equestrians, and will he ever enjoy the tender and long-anticipated charms of Jenni Cahill and her remarkable jodhpurs? All of these questions are posed, and answered, in these five extraordinary stories: stories that remind us that Irvine Welsh is a master of the shorter form, a brilliant storyteller, and - unarguably - one of the funniest and filthiest writers in Britain.

Critics

  • Under the table

    If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh 391pp, Jonathan Cape, £11.99 If You Liked School, You'll Love Work consists of a vigorous, stunningly funny novella preceded by four rather flat short stories. It's 13 years since Welsh produced a ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Nae place like hame

    If You Liked School, You'll Love Work Irvine Welsh Cape £11.99, pp391 Irvine Welsh's new collection of fiction, five substantial stories with a wide variety of settings, may have been intended to show off his versatility, but it comes close to demons ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  • irritating dialect

    OK, maybe I should have known what I was getting into. But at the same time, I did not anticipate that about half of the book would be written in a severely irritating Scottish English transcription. Local color (even local colour) is fine, particularly in dialog, but still:

    Does "Ah feel rai ... (continue)

    OK, maybe I should have known what I was getting into. But at the same time, I did not anticipate that about half of the book would be written in a severely irritating Scottish English transcription. Local color (even local colour) is fine, particularly in dialog, but still:

    Does "Ah feel rain droplets hittin my heid n shoodirs, n ah look up" add something, as opposed to "I feel rain droplets hitting my head and shoulders, and I look up"? Letting aside the believability of "droplets" as an element of stream-of-consciousness in this particular character - a particularly disgusting human specimen that does not seem very much inclined to droplets and other subtleties.

    This comment refers to the 180-page novella "Kingdom of Fife" that constitutes about half of the book.

    I don't think I will read more Welsh. It just does not resonate.

    Is this helpful?

    baffo said on Jul 5, 2008 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (16)
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  • English Books
  • Paperback 320 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0224075888
  • ISBN-13: 9780224075886
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape
  • Pub date: Jul 01, 2007
  • Also available as: eBook
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