SOURCE: A review of The Acid House, in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring, 1996, pp. 151–52.

In the following review of The Acid House, DeRossitt compares the richness of Welsh's prose to that of James Joyce.

In the stories that make up this fine collection, The Acid House, Irvine Welsh's bleak portrait of Scotland's underclass, overwrought youth often assumes Joycean resonances through the uncommon richness of his writing. Wordplay, marvelously pungent vernacular, and constant risk-taking give these pages great stylistic bravura, but also a certain poignancy: in his depictions of hustlers, addicts, born losers, and Eurotrash idlers, Welsh gives us rare glimpses of the humor and hope that are the only consolations in his characters’ dark lives.

Common to all of these stories is the desperate attempt to maintain a sense of humor in the face of the constant indignities of blighted urban life. Cramped flats, distracted lovers...