Glue cover art

Glue

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Glue

By: Irvine Welsh
Narrated by: Tam Dean Burn
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 Glue is the story of four boys growing up in the Edinburgh schemes, and about the loyalties, the experiences, and the secrets that hold them together into their 30s. Four boys becoming men: Juice Terry, the work-shy fanny-merchant, with corkscrew curls and sticky fingers; Billy the boxer, driven, controlled, playing to his strengths; Carl, the Milky Bar Kid, drifting along to his own soundtrack; and the doomed Gally, who has one less skin than everyone else and seems to find catastrophe at every corner.

As we follow their lives from the '70s into the new century, from punk to techno, from speed to Es, we can see each of them trying to struggle out from under the weight of the conditioning of class and culture, peer pressure, and their parents' hopes that maybe their sons will do better than they did. What binds the four of them is the friendship formed by the scheme, their school, and their ambition to escape from both; their loyalty fused in street morality: back up your mates, don't hit women and, most importantly, never grass, on anyone.

Despite its scale and ambition, Glue has all Irvine Welsh's usual pace and vigour, crackling dialogue, scabrous set-pieces and black, black humour, but it is also a grown-up book about growing up, about the way we live our lives, and what happens to us when things become unstuck.

©2001 Irvine Welsh (P)2001 Random House Audiobooks Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Comedy

Listeners also enjoyed...

 O Brother cover art
T2 Trainspotting cover art
Rambling Man cover art
The Young Team cover art
Our Vinnie: The true story of Yorkshire’s notorious criminal family cover art
Meantime cover art
Crossing the Whitewash: A UK Gangland Thriller cover art
Once Were Warriors cover art
Hings cover art
Scotland’s Wildest Bank Robber cover art
HWFG cover art
The Sunshine Cruise Company cover art
Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances cover art
The Black Dog cover art
Trust Nobody cover art
Espedair Street cover art

Critic reviews

"Full of incident, mad, crackling dialogue, attractively appalling characters, and some of the funniest and rudest sex scenes." ( Sunday Times)
All stars
Most relevant
The title speaks for itself. Out of the two books Porno is the better. 3 stars is a bit harsh but I am giving Porno 4, and its not as good. One thing I like is the way the books interlace ever so slightly.

I think Porno is bettter!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Believable characters in crazy situations, as you'd expect from Welsh.
Well performed, slightly off-putting if you're a listener to Athletico Mince at first because it really sounds like a 'Scottish Tale!', but Tam Dean Burn brings the Scots dialect to life

Dark, funny and filthy in every respect

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love this book, but a shame it's a shortened version, it still has the same story but a bit more concise

My favourite book. a few bits missed out tho

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Always enjoy Irvine Welsh's stuff, but was a bit put off by the fact this has been considerably chopped down from the actual length of the book, and therefore some parts that we're vital to the plot we're cut out and non necessary one's weren't.

Good but not full book length

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Love Irvine Welshes books loves Tam Dean Burn reading them. But the audio quality and editing of this poor and there are chapters missing.

Good Story chapters missing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews