Glue

An epic novel about the bonds of friendship from the author of *Trainspotting*. The story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh projects, *Glue* is about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold friends together through three decades. The boys become men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, exceedingly thin-skinned and vulnerable to catastrophe at every turn. We follow their lives from the seventies into the new century—from punk to techno, from speed to E—as they struggle with the conditioning of class and culture, peer pressure, and their parents’ hopes that maybe their sons will do better than they did. What binds the four of them is the friendship formed by the projects, their school, and their ambition to escape from both. Their loyalty is fused in street morality: Back up your mates, don’t hit women, and, most important, never snitch—on anyone. *Glue* has the Irvine Welsh trademarks—crackling dialogue, scabrous set pieces, and black, black humor—but it is also a grown-up book about growing up, about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.