SOURCE: “The Way of All Flesh,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 20, 1998, p. 7.

In the following review of Filth, Jensen gives a detailed tour of the narrative structure of the novel, finding it most powerful at the halfway point and flawed at the beginning and end.

During the course of his narration, Bruce Robertson, whose voice carries Filth, Irvine Welsh's third novel, provides a running account of the music he listens to, mostly while driving his Volvo about Edinburgh, less frequently while at home. A sampling of the Robertson playlist looks like this: Deep Purple's “In Rock”; Ozzy Osborne's “Ultimate Sin”; Led Zeppelin's “Houses of the Holy”; and the Michael Shenker Group's “Assault Attack,” “Rock Will Never Die” and “Built to Destroy.”

Then there's Michael Bolton. Bolton sings, on a “compilation tape I made, ‘How Am I Supposed to Live Without You’ … and I sing my heart...