If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

These five stories remind us that Welsh is a master of the shorter form, a brilliant storyteller and, unarguably, one of the funniest and filthiest writers alive. In Rattlesnakes, when three young Americans find themselves lost in the desert, how is it that one find himself performing fallatio on another while being watched by the bare-breasted Madeline and two armed Mexicans? Who is the mysterious Korean chef who has moved in with Chicago socialite Kendra Cross, in The D.O.G.S. of Lincoln Park, and what does he have to do with the disappearance of her faithful pooch, Toto? In the title story, can Mickey Baker, an English bar-owner on the Costa Brava, manage to keep all his balls in the air: maintaining his barmaid Teresa’s body weight at the sexual maximum while attending to the youthful Persephone, and dodging his persistent ex-wife and a pair of Spanish gangsters? In Miss Arizona, Raymond Wilson Butler is writing a biography of a legendary U.S. movie director. By what train of events does he end up as a piece of movie memorabilia? And how, in The Kingdom of Fife, will Jason King — diminutive ex-trainee jockey and Subbuteo star of Cowdenbeath — fare in the world of middle-class female equestrians? From the Trade Paperback edition.