title: Glue
author:  Irvine Welsh 
description: With a title like <i>Glue</i>, it would seem reasonable to assume that Irvine Welsh's fifth book is a meditation on the pitfalls of solvent abuse. In fact the word refers to the bonds that unite four boys, all of whom have grown up in "the scheme"--i.e., Edinburgh's slum-clearance flats, whose optimistic construction in the 1970s give way to the poverty, unemployment, and crime of the succeeding decades. It is the pervasive despair of these crumbling projects that defines the lives of the protagonists: budding DJ Carl Ewart, boxer Billy Birrell, work-shy, sex-mad Terry Lawson, and Andrew Galloway, a drug addict who has tested HIV-positive.
zlib_text: GLUE
  
  Irvine Welsh lives in London.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By the same author
  
  FICTION
  
  Trainspotting  
  The Acid House  
  Marabou Stork Nightmares  
  Ecstasy  
  Filth
  
  DRAMA
  
  You’ll Have Had Your Hole
  
  SCREENPLAY
  
  The Acid House
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  GLUE
  
  IRVINE WELSH
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2001 by Irvine Welsh
  
  First American edition 2001
  
  All rights reserved
  
  Printed in the United States of America
  
  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
  to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,  
  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
  
  Manufacturing by Quebecor Fairfield Inc.
  
  Production manager: Leelo Märjamaa-Reintal
  
  ISBN 0-393-32215-7 (pbk.)
  
  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110  
  [www.wwnorton.com](http://www.wwnorton.com)
  
  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House,  
  75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
  
  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This book is dedicated to  
  Shearer, Scrap, George, Jimmy, Deano, Mickey,  
  Tam, Simon, Miles, Scott and Crawf  
  for sticking 