I didn’t think I was enjoying this book as I was reading it but it turned out that I galloped through it at quite a pace. It’s good, dramatic and tender and has a real sense of the time it was set in – the 40’s. The parts are in reverse chronological order which allow the story to unfold in an interesting way. It makes for compulsive reading as blanks are filled in all the way to the end. There are lots of characters; I had to make a list to help me remember as read.

I applied Sarah’s Rule and read 100 pages of this. There is a very funny bit: Renton and his colleagues have a regular competition to see who can do the biggest poos (on newspaper, for measuring). This time their boss is on his way to the toilet so they have to ‘pick up the papers, open the windaes and fling oor bombs oantae the flat roof’ before the boss catches them.

But there isn’t anything noteworthy about the rest. I’ve read 105 pages – the whole first part – and there isn’t anything pushing me to read on. The stuff that is good has been done before; if I’d never met Begbie in Trainspotting I might have found him more amusing/shocking, but I have already met him before. I first read Trainspotting when I was about 18 and I was totally blown away by it. I remember enjoying it just as much the second time I read it but, on reading it again some years later, I’d had enough of it. Perhaps that’s why I’m not interested enough in Skagboys.