If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

An engaging story collection by the master of Scottish drugs, sex and four-letter words. In fact, though, only one piece here, the novella Kingdom of Fife, is set in Scotland. The title story (and it is a superb title!) follows the adventures of a womanising English expat in Fuertaventura, whilst "Rattlesnakes", "Dogs of Lincoln Park" and "Miss Arizona" are all set in the US. They are all fun, but I think my favourite of the short pieces was "Dogs of Lincoln Park," where a real-estate agent's dog goes missing shortly after a Korean chef moves into the building and Welsh manages to keep us guessing for far longer than anyone would have thought possible. He then reverses the trick in "Miss Arizona", but there didn't seem to be a lot of show more point in that.
"If You Liked School, You'll Love Work" is a long-short story with a fairly conventional plot -- a man who has lived by evading his responsibilities finds that all the women in his life have ganged up on him -- but it has a lot of enjoyable detail.
The real joy of the collection, though, is Kingdom of Fife, which takes up the second half of the book. It's set in the less-than-delightful former mining town of Cowdenbeath and the narration alternates between two young people, the unemployed former apprentice jockey and serial stalker Jason, who writes in all but impenetrable dialect, and Jenni, the very horsey, middle-class daughter of a thuggish businessman, who uses standard English. Welsh has a lot of fun manoeuvring both of them into places where they are forced to rise above themselves and their no-hope lives in Fife, and feeds the reader some delightful treats of language along the way. show less

~3 stars for the first four stories, though the final novella is one of his best. they're well crafted enough, but it's like he started at the punchline and worked backwards, whereas 'The Kingdom of Fife' is Welsh at his best, people living their lives and wrestling with life

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work is a short story collection by Irvine Welsh. There are five stories in it, almost all around the length of fifty pages (The last one could actually be called a novel, it's got almost 190 pages).



What I like most about Irvine Welsh is the way he can - seemingly without effort - include dialects in his writings. He usually writes from a third- or first-person point of view and he really knows how to nail a character's voice. The language and the dialect is always perfectly in tune with them. In this short story collection, where he changes from a young American guy, to a middle-aged English man and then again to a very posh Chicago woman etc., this is especially obvious.



All the stories had me hooked, show more although it always took me a couple of pages to get into them, to get used to that sudden change of voice.



Rattlesnakes

In the Nevada desert, two young men and a young woman are stranded, after attending a rave. And as if things weren't complicated enough without that, one of them gets bitten by a rattlesnake.
The story is funny, but in a "I rather laugh than think about that" way. It builds up to a big explosion in the end and delivers (not literally, though) just that. The end's open and in this case, I would have liked it to go on a bit more and show us what happens next.



If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

On Fuerteventura, an English bar owner is torn between the women in his life: his ex, his daughter, his lover, his sometimes lover and his next conquest.
The story is divided in five parts and each part concentrates on one of the women, but it's still a stringent story. Mostly, he talks about sex, in a direct way, and with pretty frank details. I like that.



The DOGS of Lincoln Park

Three yuppie girls meet regularly in an Asian restaurant, where they talk about guys and bitch about each other, at least inwardly. When the chef of the restaurant moves into the same apartment building like one of them, worlds collide.
The way the girls treat each other strongly reminded me of American Psycho, even though the story goes into a different direction. The DOGS... kind of takes the yuppie lifestyle as a given, and does not explore that, but our prejudices. It's funny, but the ending seems a bit uninspired.



Miss Arizona

A director/writer sets out to write a biography about a recently deceased independent filmmaker. For that, he interviews his widow, the former Miss Arizona, by now old and washed up, who lives alone in the desert.
The story is meant to be surprising, I think, but it utterly fails to do that. But I enjoyed it anyway, especially the way the relationship between Miss Arizona and the writer unfolds slowly.



Kingdom of Fife

A young, unemployed man more or less stalks a rich horse rider. The horse rider's best friend struggles with her family and place in life.
The story takes place in Fife, Scotland and is written alternatively from the man's and the best friend's perspective. When the young man's talking, the book looks like this (that's the first paragraph):



Ya hoor, sor; the conversation in this place wid make a pornographer blush. -- You ken Big Monty, it's no as if eh isnae well hung or nowt like that. Eh'd goat a hud ay that crystal meth fae some boy in Edinbury n it wis up like two fucking cans ay Tennent's, yin oan toap ay the other; his words no mine, the Duke ay Musselbury says aw sagely, liftin the pint ay Guiness tae ehs lips n takin a swallay. Thir's a ridge ay foam, or cream as the Porter Brewery chaps in Dublin wid like ye tae think ay it, hingin fae the dirty ginger mowser oan ehs toap lip. Early Seturday n we're the only cunts in the Goth, wur local boozer. Great place, the Goth, an awfay warm howf, wi aw thon mahogany-coloured wood everywhaire. Thir's a big screen oppposite the bar for the fitba, usually just Scottish (borin, only two teams kin win), or English (worse, only one team kin win), bit they sometimes show Le Liga or the Bundeslegia. Thir's a big partitioned pool room at the side, surrounded by gless, makin aw the bams in thaire look like goldfish.



Admittedly, writing in dialect like that, slows the reading down at first. A lot. But that's all made up by the cool-factor, and my obsession with Scottish. And you get used to it pretty quickly, so the tempo goes up again and the coolness stays the same.
The story is really sweet, sweeter than I'm used to, coming from Irvine Welsh. I really liked the two main characters, always a good thing. I think it's my favourite from the collection. show less

I actually quite enjoyed this book. (That being said, I did read it on a 9 hour transatlantic flight and anything is better then the romantic comedies you are subjected too.)

[If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work] is a collection of short stories and one novella so comparing it to any longer books (like [Trainspotting] which will probably be the one he is remembered for), just isn’t a fair comparison. The first few stories are good, not because of his famed vernacular writing style, but because much like his American counterpart [[Chuck Palahniuk]] you can see the train wreck coming. It fills you with dread and anticipation: Which character will survive? Can things get any worse? What’s with the author’s love of the large show more ladies?

Or in some cases, you think you hear the train and just as you are about to turn and look into its headlights, scene.

Personally, I am a big fan of gore, squalor and a bit of the ol’ ultra violence in my beach reads and it definitely delivers that. As for applying in depth analysis or even critical theory to this book, don’t bother. It’s enjoyable and smart escapism.

-The Mistress show less

It's incredibly hard to rate this book. Irvine Welsh has been one of my favorite authors for over a decade, and I've never disliked anything he's had his hand in. The same goes here. Mostly it was a good collection of short stories. It could have, however, benefitted from the abscence of "The D.O.G.S. Of Lincoln Park". While I appreciate what he was trying to do with the story, it felt like it really came up short. It also took nearly 60 pages of "The Kingdom Of Fife" to sell me on that story.

Not his best work, but from what I understand these were stories he was writing when he had a moment here and there of spare time between other projects. If I can think of it that way - like you would a musical side project - then it's well good show more enough. show less

Un libro un pouco bestia nalgúns momentos, sobre todo no que atañe ó sexo, pero que tamén ten moitas doses de humor (negro) cando describe a determinados tipos humáns. Hilarante o conto das rapazas tipo Paris Hilton. Tamén ten moito de machista e de grosería pero vale a pena.

Some fun stories in here. I particularly liked Kingdom Of Fife. A simple wee story of people escaping their roots without being twee or overly complex.
But as for Ms. Arizona. Roald Dahl should sue.