Welsh uses ‘sensitivity reader’ for latest book
IN a career peppered with controversy, he has always seemed like the kind of writer who is far more keen on shocking his readers than sparing their feelings.
So critics might question whether or not Irvine Welsh is going soft – after the former ‘enfant terrible’ of Scottish literature admitted having turned to a ‘sensitivity reader’ to help him craft transgender characters for his latest crime novel.
Welsh’s books are typically crammed with graphic descriptions of drug use, extreme violence, foul language and sex.
So much so that his debut work, the 1993 novel Trainspotting, infamously missed out on the Booker shortlist after offending judges’ sensibilities.
His new book, The Long Knives, sees the return of Crime’s DI Ray Lennox, who takes up the case of a Tory MP found murdered and mutilated in a Leith warehouse.
The work features a number of transgender characters – including a former police officer who has transitioned, Lennox’s nephew turned niece who is beaten up in a potential hate crime, and Gary/Gayle, who is 6ft 4in and sports bangles and long flowing hair.
Mr Welsh told The Sunday Times that despite his initial misgivings, he had enjoyed working with the sensitivity reader. He said: ‘It was really affirmative for me in terms of what I was writing.
‘But there were also areas where I was completely wrong and made wrong assumptions and had details wrong, and they were able to pull me up and help me, rather than just pull me up on these issues.
‘That is the spirit in which we have to move forward.’
Mr Welsh, 63, who recently married for the third time to the actress Emma Currie, insisted that he had not decided to write about transgender characters in a bid to be provocative but instead to create interesting characters.
He added: ‘I thought it would be interesting if one of the characters was trans or appeared to be trans. Then I realised it is such a complicated issue.
‘It is hard to represent something that doesn’t lend itself to archetypes because everybody’s experience of that is different.’
The novel is a follow-up to Crime, published in 2008, which was adapted last year into a BritBox television series with DI Lennox played by Dougray Scott.
‘Able to pull me up and help me’