He’s a knack for tapping into the zeitgeist, Irvine Welsh; a knack that’s surpassed only by his astonishing ability to superficially reinvent his style, and yet keep it exactly the same underneath. Enter The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins - a strange, symbiotic book that kept me engrossed for the better part of a week, and at the cost of just £6.39 and my good standing in the eyes of my colleagues (who are now convinced that I’m an utterly perverted fetishist).
TWO FEISTY GIRLS
ONE SMOKIN’ HOT BODY
BIG TROUBLE
ONE SMOKIN’ HOT BODY
BIG TROUBLE
You can see why my lunchtime read raised an eyebrow or two - Welsh’s unusually lengthy (though not quite his longest), tabloid-headline title suggests a niche and elicit exposé of the type that would find popularity amongst some with extremely specific interests, to put it kindly, as well as those who watch Channel 4’s generally quite gruesome documentaries. In fact though, it’s C4’s Supersize vs Superskinny writ large, transplanted to Miami Beach and reliant upon bondage and cesspools instead of guilt-trips and scare-stories. Rather than tackle the inevitable complexities of the title, Welsh turns his dark humour towards the cult of celebrity and the dangerous modern obsessions with looks, food, sex and status. Whilst the ethical dilemmas borne of conjoined twins’ sex lives do feature in the #hashtag background of Miami’s media, it is only to shine a light on the protagonists, whose complex and increasingly intertwined lives bind them as effectively as shared organs. 
Carried by just two female voices, Sex Lives pits über-fit, orthorexic and venomously dominant personal trainer Lucy Brennan (“Height: 5’7”. Weight: 112 lbs”) against blobby art sensation and long-suffering submissive Lena Sorenson (“5’2”, maybe 5’3”, and about 220 lbs”), whose half-hearted quest to get leaner is unwittingly thrown into overdrive when she’s peculiarly drawn to Lucy after witnessing her disarm a gunman and become the overnight darling of Miami’s media. Of course, fame isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, even fame of the local hero variety, and it’s only a matter of time before even the toughest cookie melts in its smouldering spotlight – particularly when she’s being stalked by a fluffy-animal-obsessed chubster.
With most works in the Welsh canon having been written in his trademark phonetic Scots-schemie dialect, the Americanised English of Sex Lives stands out like one of Nicola Fuller-Smith’s poor massage-parlour hand-jobs in Porno. On the one hand, this must silence the author’s critics who question his ability to write for characters far removed from his Muirhouse upbringing (if not his Miami residence), but on the other, it does mean that his readers have to suffer an entire novel’s worth of grating dialogue that – deliberately or otherwise – is much harder to stomach than a couple of hundred pages of Spud’s finest drawl.
“I’m sorry about the wait.” /
“Well, that’s a start. But don’t beat yourself up, take action...”
Beyond convincing Americanisms, the novel’s credibility rests upon its calculated lack of objectivity on both sides of the fatty / skinny divide. Welsh has clearly done his homework into contemporary schools of thought on diet and exercise, and this shines through in both Lucy’s scathing commentary on her obsessive, borderline-nerdy (says I…) personal discipline, and the ruthless judgement that she passes on all who’ve fallen victim to the “plague of obesity” on which she obsesses with such zeal. Homeless and starving or fat and working at McDonalds, nobody is safe from her unsolicited, help-veiled spite. He’s just as thorough, though, when dissecting the pathology that drives Lena’s appalling eating habits, and he doesn’t shy away from the implication that her underlying neuroses have helped to shape her into one of the foremost alternative artists of her generation, if not a perfect ten. But “The Transformation of Lena Sorenson”, or rather, the re-“Transformation of Lena Sorenson” (she didn’t start off podgy, see), soon spirals into a psychotic and surreal story of bullying, kidnap, rape, and even second-degree murder - one that’s laced with intrigue and a seemingly endless procession of jaw-dropping surprises.
No matter how many twists in the tale though, Welsh makes events seem perfectly plausible and logical. Once the “Hostages” section of the book is underway, there’s even a tangible inexorability to events as they drag the reader towards a dénouement that is surprisingly and refreshingly uplifting: art defeats circumstance in the most misshapen of ways, and the Scotsman finally brings balance to the fore.
“I need her and she needs me.”
I fear though that The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins’ success will be curtailed by its provocative title, which, going by office reactions, is likely to prevent even the mildly squeamish or self-conscious getting as far as the book’s blurb. This is a pity as, of all Welsh’s novels, this one is hands-down the healthiest.
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is available to download from iTunes for £5.99 or from Amazon’s Kindle Store for £5.69. Hard copies of the novel are still available too, with the Book Depository offering the hardback for £9.99 with free delivery, and Amazon offering the paperback for £6.39 with free delivery if you buy another £4.41’s worth of books or subscribe to Amazon Prime. Based upon my own experiences though, I would recommend the e-book...
