Reviews

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work by Irvine Welsh

ezzag's review against another edition

dark funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.25

I just love Irvine Welsh so much! Fun, a bit shocking, sometimes gross - overall easy, disturbing reading. I had fun.

robsonjv's review against another edition

1.0

Picked it up in an airport in New Zealand, intrigued by the blurbs on the cover (which turned out to be total lies). Poorly written, unnecessarily crude, inauthentic dialogue...it is truly sad that trees had to die for this piece of crap. Even trapped in a plane for 13 hours, I couldn't bring myself to finish it

clarisa's review against another edition

4.0

Love the way he writes about Scotland.

monty_reads's review against another edition

4.0

Irvine Welsh has the uncanny ability to make everything seem sordid. There's always a sheen of filth covering his work, and that's true of the five stories in this collection. From the first story (where a camper has his junk bitten by a rattlesnake) to the last (featuring dogfights, decapitation, and cocaine laced with human ashes), there's just no escaping the fact that you finish all of Welsh's books feeling a little bit dirty. Not that that's a bad thing, mind. In these stories his language is as vibrant as ever, and even amid the dirt and desperation there's humor and the sense that his characters act the way they do only as a distraction on the way to something better.

myphairlady's review

dark funny reflective medium-paced

3.25

chloe_s's review

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

2.0

dumbmaddie's review

dark funny sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

caitlind14's review against another edition

Irvine Welsh writes like a teenager who thinks being disgusting is being edgy. He doesn’t understand (or care about) grammar and speech marks. 

yasha59's review

2.0

dnf

melanie_page's review against another edition

2.0

I didn't finish the book because these stories just didn't have that special element that I so often find in Welsh's stories, like Trainspotting, Porno, and Marabou Stork Nightmares