Unfortunately, old habits die hard: Graeme felt like an outsider and found it difficult to relate to the other students on his course due to his working class background. It shows a pathway out; that there is some hope for the disaffected; but also it shows the damage caused on the way - those who cannot rise to navigate their way from youth to adult, and stay trapped. Would have been cringing at a lot more of the text had I not heard Armstrong’s voice with the various characters.

Graeme Armstrong: ‘When I stopped taking drugs, I felt a kind

He added: “There was plenty of bad, but you still have a wee glint in your eye talking about it, like veterans do.Award-winning production company Synchronicity Films (The Cry, Only You) has optioned the rights to Graeme Armstrong’s acclaimed debut novel The Young Team (Picador, 2020), which it is developing as a bold and provocative scripted series. I wrote three words down – The Young Team – and I stared at it and thought, 'this is going to be a film, it’s going to the new Sweet Sixteen'. The forgotten generation with nothing to do but drink, take drugs, fight and shag- constantly looking for that high, that euphoria, happiness.

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That doesnae matter but cos time is on our side, the summer stretchin oot before us wae a million possibilities ae love n war, high dayz n fuckin adventure on the Lanarkshire Frontier. Graeme Armstrong is a vital voice in Scottish fiction deserving of the recognition and accolades afforded to a young Irvine Welsh.

I was thinking about Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen, how good that was, how it was the first time my generation had been portrayed: kids of the 90s and 00s. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The Young Team: Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023

But Trainspotting, for all its bravado and great writing, does not hit the narrative and realistic heights of The Young Team. There are lots of young men in the west of Scotland who are wounded by trauma and can’t talk about their feelings. While the story of fighting a growing dependence on drink and drugs is compelling, the novel’s great strength is its use of the distinctive North Lanarkshire dialect, with its almost Northern Irish twang. Expelled from school in his mid-teens, he transferred to Coatbridge high school, and went on to study English literature at Stirling University.It focusses on young working class males on Lanarkshire estates who are compelled to live up to the hard man image of their elders.

The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong | Waterstones

This reminded me of many other contemporary Scottish voices, and when all is said and done, this is a well-crafted piece of work, which really captures the ragged voice of the marginalised and ridiculed within the lower working class. The gang members who aren't impoverished, but seek out gangs anyway, the kid whose family environment of alcoholism dictate how he copes, and the females who affect Azzys decisions. Azzy refers to himself as “A”, and I did a slight double take when he and his gang referred to getting wine: it was not Sauvignon Blanc, of course, but Buckfast. We are excited to be working with Graeme, Ben and Adrian to collaborate on an authentic scripted adaptation of this seminal novel.Armstrong brings them all to life and really nails why they are stuck in this cycle of drink, drugs and violence. I could almost have been there as the tension built around this violent and unpredictable life of drink, drugs, raves and fights, sometimes with tragic consequences.