If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work Irvine Welsh Jonathan Cape, 391pp, £11.99

This grimly titled short story collection serves up everything we have come to expect from the Scotsman: a cast of loathsome characters, tits, arse and people who seem to deserve it coming to entertainingly grisly ends. Like him or loathe him, Welsh writes unforgettable tales – if only because his storytelling is stomach-churningly vivid.

Unfortunately, even fans of Welsh’s phonetic spelling (and those who aren’t shouldn’t even attempt the last story) will admit that the Mexican dialect in “Rattlesnakes” is off-kilter, and Welsh’s lingo tends to obstruct rather than add to the humour.

In other places, though, the voices are pitched perfectly, particularly in the title story. Here, a randy cockney pub owner juggles his worries about gangsters with the various women in his life: the bulky Cynthia – “unshaggable till you down a couple of scotches”; Marcia, the “skinny tart”; and Seph, who bears an unfortunate moustache. “The Dogs of Lincoln Park” is a biting satire of the bitchy, back-stabbing world of New York socialites; and while “Miss Arizona”, the tale of a four-times married beauty queen with a penchant for taxidermy, takes time to get off the ground, the climax is worth it.

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