SOURCE: “Schemies, Soapdodgers, and Huns,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4,722, October 1, 1993, p. 20.

In the following review of Trainspotting, O’Brien finds Welsh's voice an intriguing combination of black comedy and hard-edged realism, though he wonders what the future holds for a writer with so bleak a world view.

Deciding to get off heroin, Mark Renton acquires two opium suppositories to help him through the worst of withdrawal. Caught short in the street, he takes refuge in the flooded lavatory of a bookie's, but the solution to the immediate problem is followed by alarm at the loss of the suppositories. There is nothing for it but to roll his sleeve up and retrieve them.

Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh's first novel, is rich in incident of this kind. Renton's life is full of practical difficulties. A resident of Edinburgh—the heroin/AIDS capital of Europe—he has to maintain an elaborate...