In Men in Love, action takes place over roughly, three years upto 1990, Welsh has to think himself into an era before smartphones and the internet. Late 1980s, the closing years of Thatcher’s Britain. For the Trainspotting crew, a new era is about to begin- a time for hope, for love, for raving.

Leaving heroin behind and separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption.

Sick Boy starts an intense relationship with Amanda, his princess- rich, connected, everything that he is not. When the pair set a date for their wedding, Sick Boy sees for his generation to take control at last.

Spud and Begbie still express themselves in the most vivid Scottish dialect; their words sing- or, in the case of Begbie, spit -off the page. A pompous, preening version of standard English is how Simon Williamson (Sick Boy) , half-Italian, all narcissist, is voiced although he can code-switch where necessary. While exiled Renton is the most pensive and analytical. Spud ia appalled ot be called “the C-word”, an unforgivable slur, by Begbie, however, it’s  “clown”. Begbie already has children and a partner, but the others now grope for a measure of emotional maturity as they wean themselves off the gear, off Leith, and off childish nicknames and attitudes, Danny/Spud, a gentle soul, has fallen in love with Ali, whose vehemently stated preference for “skag” over sex, so disconcerted the lads in Trainspotting. Renton falls for a free spirit in Amsterdam who lures him into the sex club scene.

Simon smitten by Amanda Coningsby, an upper-class woman he meets in a Narcotic Anonymous meeting in north London. He has achieved his aim of escape from Leith, but his two worlds collide when his friends from north of  the border descend on the Coningsbys’ tasteful Thameside mansion. Dyslexic Spud marvels over the volumes in the Coningsbys’ library, while a terrible memory poignantly explains his compulsive thieving. Simon loves romantic poetry and has a thing for Mary Shelley, Renton is haunted by Crime and Punishment.

But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest?

Men in Love by Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Cape £20, 544 pages.