Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine in which we share a book that we are eagerly anticipating!
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Author: Irvine Welsh
Release date: April 7, 2016
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary.
But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas.
When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.
The Blade Artist is an elegant, electrifying novel – ultra violent but curiously redemptive – and it marks the return of one of modern fiction’s most infamous, terrifying characters, the incendiary Francis Begbie from Trainspotting.
Why I’m excited: BEGBIE, YOU GUYS. BEGBIE IS BACK. I’m not sure how many of you will have heard of Trainspotting – though you might’ve seen/heard of the movie with Ewan McGregor and Ewen Bremner and freaking Robert Carlyle as Begbie. That book is definitely not for everyone but I loved it in all it’s raw, rough, swear-y, disgusting, violent glory, and I totally happy-danced when I heard there was going to be a sequel. And that synopsis? YES, PLEASE!
Caught Read Handed 
Pleas please explain to me why I should believe Trainspotting is a good book! I’m very critical – I did a book review of it not too long ago over on my blog. I really just can’t get to grips with it at all, and don’t know why I should have a positive response towards the book. Please shed some light on it for me!! 🙂
I’m personally a bit obsessed with Scotland, so I love the fact that it’s written in dialect. I also like seeing Edinburgh through different characters’ eyes. The book is a portrait of the people who lived in that area of Scotland during that time (the early 90s). It’s not nice about it either. It’s honest and raw and, yes, sometimes confusing, but that’s how their life was. And it’s meant to represent their lives exactly as they were. Does that make sense?
Ironically, they’re exactly the reasons why I didn’t like the book haha! It took me ages to understand the dialect & character perspective, and I really didn’t enjoy the explicit/upfront/raw knowledge about sex/drugs. I guess it’s just down to personal tastes 🙂
Definitely. But I can understand why you didn’t enjoy it. It’s not for everyone. 🙂