Skagboys (Paperback)

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In the 1980s, Mark Renton looks as if he has everything: young, good looking, with a pretty girlfriend and a bright future. But there is no room for him in the world he is living in, and when his family starts to fracture his life swings out of control. The way out becomes heroin.

Around him, his friends are sliding too. Spud Murphy is laid off from his job. Tommy Lawrence is pulled into petty crime and violence, and into the orbit of the psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through whatever turns up.

Skagboys follows their shift from likely lads to young addicts, as the decade bears down and the choices narrow. It holds close to friendship, bravado and fear, and to the damage that gathers when a way of life begins to feel like a trap.