The Blade Artist

It was a strange experience encountering a member of the iconic Trainspotting squad in their own separate narrative. The tone is a lot more somber than usual, but it is just as violent as you'd expect from a novel starring Francis Begbie. Going into this I expected to gain more insight into Begbie's psychological make-up and yet I am walking away from this more perplexed and intrigued than ever...

I just read “The Blade Artist” by Irvine Welsh. It’s always fun to follow a new adventure from some of the characters Welsh introduced in two of his earlier novels.

This follows Francis Begbie quite some years after we last saw him in a Welsh novel. I think that was near the end of “Porno” when he gets hit by a car as he’s about to attack Renton.

In the intervening decades he’s spent a lot of time in prison, which has actually done him a lot of good, and he’s been well rehabilitated. He’s married to the art therapist who helped him in prison and they live on California coast where he’s become an artist, going by the name Jim Francis. They have two young daughters and he truly loves the three ladies in his life.

Near show more the beginning of the novel his oldest son with his former girlfriend, June, has been killed, so he flies to Edinburgh for the funeral, with a plan to stay at his younger sister, Elspeth’s house. Elspeth is married to Greg, the boyfriend Begbie beat up in the short story. He meets “Juice” Terry Lawson at the taxi stand when his flight lands.

He gets on alright with his brother-in-law, Greg, and Elspeth and Greg’s sons, but Elspeth continues to be suspicious of him, knowing what he was like as a teen and young man, not really believing his rehabilitation from prison.

He doesn’t care much for his three kids in Scotland, he knows of them, but has no emotional attachment to them. He’s aware that he was a bad father, but doesn’t care. He still has a duty to go to the funeral, and pay for it.

In Edinburgh he wants to find out who killed his son, and various people from his past and from his acquaintance’s current time there all try to point him one way or another, hoping he’ll use the violence he was well known for to eliminate a rival or enemy of theirs’, whether or not that’s who killed his son anyway.

While there he runs into some of his old friends. He mostly keeps the old Begbie buried under his new Jim personality, but his accent changes a bit, more of the old Scots slang.

Towards the end some of the things Begbie does are a lot less believable. It was hard to picture some of it, which detracted a little.

Overall it’s a good read for an Irvine Welsh fan. It’s certainly not a book for a new Welsh reader to begin with. It’s fun to revisit some of his characters. show less

The Blade Artist was a bit hard for me to get into. It started out pretty good, some hinting at vigilante justice—which I really could get into. But then things went south from there. The main character, Jim Francis, is called to a family tragedy back in Scotland. Then all heck breaks loose in Francis’s life. He’s back in his old stomping grounds and it seems that it transports him back to being the angry punk that he used to be. This is my interpretation of the book, and I’m sure others will have better views. I felt that Francis had too many anger management problems, was a hot head and had no morals. But he flip-flopped around. When it came to his “new and improved” family, he’s all morality and love. To his old family, show more he bluntly turns his back and says that he feels nothing for them. Maybe guys will like this book better, with it being a filled with action. Maybe I just didn’t get it. I know it is my fault that I had a hard time reading the Scottish accents throughout, but I didn’t cut down my star rating for that at all. So, all in all, a reader might just have to make their own mind up about this one. All I can say is that it wasn’t for me. show less

Good read, storyline not what I expected

I like a good Irvine Welsh book, the Trainspotting series being the obvious favourite.
I don't want to give anything away but what I will say is for me the book was easy to read, (done and dusted in 2 days over a few hours) and enjoyable. A bit far fetched in some parts even considering the main character's history but still enjoyable.

BIt tired of the post Trainspotting Welsh books. Almost revels in the violence which I tend to find challenging to read.

I loved almost all previous Welsh's books, especially Filth. But I guess I am definitely out of that phase because this one here didn't attract me, 1/3 through and I got quite bored.

I thought it would be fun to catch up with some Trainspotting characters. This is not a nice book. Glorifies violence.