Wreckage

After their botched and brutal mission to punish a one-armed man in a small Welsh village, Darren and Alastair head back to Liverpool to report to their mob boss. On the way home, Darren robs a rural postal office in Wales that serves as a bank and needlessly cracks the skull of a little old postal lady. Darren’s eyes are full of fire, “We’re rich Alastair! Do wharrever the fuck we wanner do now!” But Alastair sees his own nain in this elderly woman and falls victim to his conscience. Darren has finally gone too far.

As Alastair and Darren weave their way through the lowlife milieu of Liverpool, we hear many voices: the alky, the crack addict, the busman, the whores, gangsters, and Darren’s many victims. But we also hear the voices of their ancestors going back generations of unthinkable grief and poverty. A fascinating follow-up to Stump, which Irvine Welsh calls “a magnificent novel of loss and obsession by a major talent.”