Sam Phipps

Indelible Acts is A. L. Kennedy's first book of fiction since Everything You Need, which was followed by a spell of suicidal desperation. We know all about that from On Bullfighting, her patchily received foray into the world of the matador which was only partly about matadors and partly about herself and her suicidal desperation. With fiction it's different, of course; you're not supposed to confuse author and content or to assume any link. Still, whatever the state of Kennedy's mind and emotions now, the predominant quality of these 12 stories - the common denominator - is, sad to say, gloom. And not always an interesting gloom at that. The Kennedy gloom tends to have a deep-seated, almost predetermined feel that makes it very hard to shift, let alone see through.

Porno is billed as 'the sequel to Trainspotting', which immediately is a worrying sign, like the blow-up doll that stares out from the front cover. Why is Irvine Welsh returning to the territory of his phenomenal debut after all these years? Does it mean he has run out of ideas? And does anyone really want or need another fix of Sick Boy, Renton, Spud and Begbie, the drug-addled radges who put a largely hidden Edinburgh on the map nearly a decade ago? These kind of doubts all swirl around as you pitch into Porno. The quotation from Nietzsche that prefaces the book - 'without cruelty there is no festival' - adds to the general feeling of advance queasiness. It turns out to be far from misplaced.