Filth by Irvine Welsh
Synopsis
With the Christmas season upon him, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson of Edinburgh’s finest is gearing up socially—kicking things off with a week of sex and drugs in Amsterdam.
There are some sizable flies in the ointment, though: a missing wife and child, a nagging cocaine habit, some painful below-the-belt eczema, and a string of demanding extramarital affairs. The last thing Robertson needs is a messy, racially fraught murder, even if it means overtime—and the opportunity to clinch the promotion he craves. Then there’s that nutritionally demanding (and psychologically acute) intestinal parasite in his gut. Yes, things are going badly for this utterly corrupt tribune of the law, but in an Irvine Welsh novel nothing is ever so bad that it can’t get a whole lot worse…
My Thoughts
My thoughts are that it shouldn’t have taken me almost 2 months to read a book of less than 400 pages but alas it did. I digress, the book is actually really good as long as you like very hard hitting and gritty books that have outstanding amounts of racism, homophobia, sexism and just plain sex (not so plain, believe me DS Robertson is not vanilla in the least) all in the best possible taste of course. This book is very hard to read and not because of the subject matters or how offensive this book could come across has but more because it’s written in a very strong Scottish accent which genuinely makes it hard to understand even if you try to read it is a Scottish accent. I suppose if you are Scottish it may be easier to read but I am merely English and my own dialect is hard enough for others to understand so trying to get round all that Scottish was difficult but I carried on and pulled on through!
Over all the book it actually really good as long as you don’t take offence easily. The thing about the issues you could take offence to in this book is that there are always character’s trying to fight against the problems like homophobia, racism and sexism so it balances it out by some degree showing that Irvine Welsh isn’t just a complete arsehole with terrible views. The story also has some decent plot twists and very strange layout, okay the plot twists are easy to guess but I didn’t figure them out until the last 70 or so pages and the strange layout, well I’ll just let you figure that one out for yourself but it is bizarre and intriguing before and after you figure out the weird layout in some of the book.
I really liked this book even though it did take me so long to read it but, the story while confused sometimes really worked because it kind of shows how chaotic the life of Bruce is but if you are easily offended then I would really suggest giving this book a miss because there is a tremendous amount of racial and homophobic slurs along with a tirade of swearing and sexism. Good book, very gritty and so hard hitting it could take the breath from your lungs in one blow.
Awarded: 3.5 Stars
It took me far too long to read this book but read it I did along with a few others so at least it didn’t put me in a slump which I am very grateful for!
Until next time guys, happy reading!
Rachel x
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