Book Review: Filth by Irvine Welsh

"That's the right idea though that Toal's got. Get as many voices in your head as you can and hide in the crowd." - Filth by Irvine Welsh

Filth was a novel I've been wanting to read for a while, and when I discovered James McAvoy was set to star in the film released this autumn I knew I had to read it before then. I'm a huge fan of the film version of Trainspotting and love Irvine Welsh for bringing its themes and distinctive style of storytelling into the mainstream, but it was Filth the novel that really made me a fan of his works.

Welsh, famous for the drug-riddled film that launched Ewan McGregor's career, writes not unsympathetically about the underbelly of Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, and the filth that lies beneath its deceptively civilised veneer. Filth is about a corrupt policeman, Bruce Robertson, who is sexist, racist, homophobic, sectarian, and addicted to sex, porn and drugs. The book starts with the murder of a black journalist and loosely chronicles Bruce and his police colleagues as they search for the killers. The book, written in the first person, details Bruce's descent into the filth he surrounds himself with in order to escape from and deny reality, and his inability to deal with his underlying mental health problems.

A second narrator appears about 1/3 of the way into the book, in the form of a tapeworm living in Bruce's intestines, and it's through the tapeworm we learn Bruce's backstory. This is an example of Welsh's experimental storytelling, both in terms of a narrative/plot device and in terms of the physicality of the text- the tapeworm's voice literally overlaps Bruce's narrative on the page, obscuring our ability to read Bruce's thoughts until the tapeworm is sated. The tapeworm begins to talk by simply urging Bruce to eat, and then slowly reveals Bruce's traumatic and violent beginnings in life.

Filth definitely benefits from a second reading as it takes time to make sense of Bruce's backstory and why he deals with situations the way he does. It also takes time for the reader to appreciate how and why Bruce's understanding of events differs from those around him. There's a scene where Bruce and Lennox make a house call to a drug user and they persuade him to pass them information by threatening him with a story about a man incarcerated for multiple violent rapes nicknamed 'the beast'- a serial rapist. It is only much, much later, from the mouth of the tapeworm, that we learn (spoiler alert!) that this is in fact Bruce's birth father, who raped his mother as a teenager. It is slowly revealed that Bruce suffers from severe mental illness, and has done for many years, and how this has affected his relationships with his wife and colleagues. The novel shows an interesting take on mental illness, and brings the nature/nurture debate to light. Did Bruce become mentally ill and behave reprehensibly‎ due to his father and his genes, or was it his upbringing and treatment as a criminal before he had done anything wrong, that caused him to behave in this way? Or a combination of both?

Filth was also a breath of fresh air in its representation of Scottish attitudes towards women, particularly when contrasted with the fact that representations of women in the media tend to be of a madonna/whore dichotomy. In Filth there are plenty of 'hoors' (the book is written in Scots dialect) and Bruce's abuse of a barely legal schoolgirl is particularly reviling, but what's refreshing is the sexual agency of all the women in the novel. For women in the novel, sex is a normal and varying part of their lives, not just in its emotional implications but in the physicality of it too. Two women in the novel who might appear to be victims at first, take back their agency after creating satisfactory sexual experiences for themselves.

I'd definitely recommend Filth to those who are fans of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries. If you enjoyed Girl, Interrupted or American Psycho, or, of course, Trainspotting, you will like Filth. If you like more modern murder mysteries like Gone Girl you might also be a fan of Filth. I enjoyed reading it just as much a second time, and it increased the depth of my understanding of the novel. Filth also gave me a lot to think about, from Scottish literature, to representations of the police force, women, sex and mental illness. I think it would be a good book for a book club discussion as there is a lot to unpack in a fairly short novel.

Rating: 5/5. Buy the book: Paperback / Kindle / DVD. Follow me: Goodreads / Twitter / Bloglovin