Author Irvine Welsh said it was “horrible” re-reading Trainspotting to make sure its new sequel was accurate – and admitted fans will still catch him out.
Welsh, 66, found fame in 1993 thanks to his novel about a group of heroin addicts in 1980s Edinburgh, later adapted into the cult film starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle.
The new sequel, Men in Love, carries on exactly where Trainspotting ended and features the same cast of main characters, but was written over 30 years apart.
Welsh, who says he forgets his books as soon as he completes them, said that reading previous work was “the worst thing you can possibly do”.
He told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival it was necessary to keep the story “consistent”, but admitted it was impossible to get everything right and he would inevitably miss something.
He said: “It’s horrible, a terrible thing. To read one of your own books is just the worst thing you can possibly do, but you have to do it.
“If you’re doing a sequel or a prequel, you have to do it to make all these things work.
“There’s always somebody that says, ‘ah but he died in this other book’. Oh my God. You’re never going to catch them all, but you have to do as much as you can to build that kind of consistent narrative throughout.”
He added: “It’s such a drag because every time you look at one of the older books, you think, God, how did I write that sentence or how did I write that? It’s just this nonsense, so you don’t want to go back, but I had to.”
Welsh returned to his home city to discuss the new book, which sees his characters looking for love.
Mark Renton, having stolen a bag of money from his friends, is found working in the club scene in Amsterdam and Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson is in London. Daniel “Spud” Murphy and Francis Begbie remain in Leith.
Welsh revealed he has several favourites among his own novels — but did not include Trainspotting.
He said: “I like Glue because it’s a big sprawling epic, and I kind of like Skag Boys, which is basically about how they got into that situation in the first place while Trainspotting is just a deep dive into that murky world.
“I like some of the later books like Dead Men’s Trousers, and I think A Decent Ride is the funniest one and so I’ve got different kinds of fondness for them all.
“I really liked Marabou Stork Nightmares at the time. It’s quite a difficult book to live with — it’s quite a harsh book in a lot of ways — and I kind of like Filth as well.
“I was going to say I like them all, but I kind of do because I wrote them all.”
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