Review: Bedroom Secrets by Irvine Welsh

Review: The Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs, by Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Cape, €14.99.

Irvine Welsh lives in a nasty place. It’s a place populated with alcoholics, criminals, misogynists and victims, and there is no room in his latest novel, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, for what’s affectionately known in the trade as a hero. Danny Skinner is the protagonist, but a hero he is not, and spending time with him is a mildly depressing experience.

Skinner is an environmental health inspector with Edinburgh council. He is in charge of restaurant inspections, but his defining features are his alcohol-fuelled cynicism, bitterness and anger.

The hard-drinking Skinner has an unusual nemesis in the form of nerdy Brian Kibby, a model railway enthusiast who comes to work in the same council department. Kibby lives at home, is obsessed with Star Trek, has never had a girlfriend, and quickly becomes the fixation point for all of Skinner’s anger, hatred and dislike of normality.

Kibby has lost his father to illness and is learning to redefine himself as an adult, while dealing with the vindictive and spiteful Skinner at work. And here’s where things get a bit weird. For no explicable reason, halfway through the book, through sheer force of will, Skinner manages to supernaturally inflict the effects of his hard drinking, drug taking, and hedonistic lifestyle on Kibby.

When he gets drunk and then into a fight at a football match, the next morning, Kibby wakes up with the resulting injuries and hangover. Skinner gleefully lays the abuse on thick, until eventually Kibby gets so ill that he needs a liver transplant and has to give up his job. Nice, eh?

Much of the book is dedicated to Skinner’s quest to discover the truth about his parentage: his anger is explained by his mother’s reluctance to tell him just exactly who his father is.

The unusual title of the book comes from Skinner’s suspicion that a local celebrity chef is actually his old man. Over the course of the story, his subsequent search for the truth takes him to San Francisco and back. As Skinner tries to find out who his father is, he comes to understand what he has done to Kibby, and tries to undo it.

Welsh’s best known book is the 1990s classic Trainspotting, propelled to international levels of recognition through Danny Boyle’s seminal film. Like Masterchefs, Trainspotting was also a book about violent, dysfunctional characters, heroin addicts scheming their way from score to score. In particular, the psychotic Begbie stood out as a truly evil character.

The difference is that, in Trainspotting, we had the character of Renton to humanise the story and make it less oppressive.

In The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, there’s no Renton, just Danny Skinner. He’s not Begbie, but he’s not far off it - he’s a chronic alcoholic with a severe case of self-loathing and a violent streak, which is just unpleasant to spend time with, and he has no redeeming features. As a result, the narrative has a relentless feel. Kibby is merely a victim, he’s not a real character and the other characters are similarly one-dimensional.

Welsh fans will probably enjoy Master Chefs, but if you are familiar with his work, then you’ll know what you’re getting: more Scottish alcohol-fuelled violence with a side order of drug-induced psychosis.