It's hard for a coming-of-age story to stand out, and Metroland really doesn't. It's almost a shame, because this is a pretty good novel, and if there had never been a coming-of-age story before this one, it would probably be more widely remembered.

My reference to Trainspotting is only partly in jest; swaths of this novel are reminiscent of it, less in terms of its prose and more in terms of its humor and the relationship between Christopher and Toni. (Some brief research reveals that Welsh has in fact read and enjoyed some of Barnes' work.) Christopher is essentially Mark Renton; Toni is essentially Sickboy. They aspire not for a life of drugs, but a life of art, trying to find not just meaning in it, but higher meaning, the kind that would have once been provided by the state or the church. Of course, they also rant against the bourgeoisie lifestyle, not admitting that they are also symptoms of it. These assumptions prove unrealistic in a sense more spiritual than material, and Christopher's arc is defined not only by his "selling out" - selling something unspecified and gaining happiness in return - but also by his steadily declining lack of faith in art.

The biggest issue with this novel is that, divided into three distinct parts, there's little connective tissue between them. Large swaths of Christopher's psychological evolution are left for us to fill in on our own; the changes that we witness are mostly plot-driven and not afforded retrospective examination. There is nevertheless a distinct moment-to-moment, line-to-line pleasure in reading Metroland, and a sense that something is being developed just out of view. From time to time Christopher ruminates about the end of life, and the end of art - everything burns eventually. That's not a fresh or exciting point to make, but sometimes a healthy dose of bittersweet fatalism, administered right on schedule, is its own reward.