Rave

Irvine Welsh, 'poet laureate of the chemical generation', exposes the seamy underbelly of rave's utopian dream. Lloyd, our permanently pilled-up protagonist, pushes his weekends to breaking point and beyond in this frazzled trip through Scottish clubland. He experiences the vertiginous uppers and downers of the Second Summer of Love, dabbles in a spot of disc jockeying and closes in, gradually, on some kind of redemption... Selected from Irvine Welsh's novel Ecstasy. "Vintage Minis": great minds. Big ideas. Little books. Also in the "Vintage Minis" series: Home by Salman Rushdie, Dreams by Sigmund Freud, Eating by Nigella Lawson, Work by Joseph Heller.