SOURCE: “In a Chemical World,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4, 862, June 7, 1996, pp. 23.

In the following review, Imlah charges Ecstasy with a lack of sympathetic, or even acceptably differentiated, characters. Imlah contrasts this flatness with Trainspotting, in which even the most revolting character inspires a certain empathy.

At the close of Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh's prodigious first novel, the junkie Mark Renton, having stolen his pals’ drug loot, is compelled to flee to a new beginning:

He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. … The thought both terrified and excited him. …

Trainspotting's phenomenal success placed its author in a similar dilemma. He had found a winning fictional formula in the torrential, ribald expression of his own East Coast subculture; but in so doing had already used up the choicest parts of his experience. His writing had to move on or perish in...