Oh dear. Lara Feigel is trying to assemble 10 novels that explore character and friendship. Included are Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, book of the year Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, various other classics – and Trainspotting. Oh dear. The claim in my book has not been contradicted – that in all three forms of Trainspotting, book play and film, character is contradictory and plot is implausible. Welsh uses character and plot as vehicles in a morality story about what happens to poor people in isolated and ostracised communities when heroin arrives. The three forms of Trainspotting all have their merits; serious studies of character and friendship is not one of them.
So I’ve written to The Guardian. That should save the world.