Trainspotting (novel) grown eloquent". The novel has since achieved a cult status, added to by the global success of the film based on it, "Trainspotting" (1996), directed by Danny Boyle. Welsh wrote a sequel, "Porno", in 2002. "Skagboys", a novel that serves as a prequel, was published in April 2012. The novel is split up into seven sections: the first six contain multiple chapters of varying length and differing focus. The novel's origins in short fiction are still visible though no segment or chapter is wholly independent of the others. The majority of the stories are narrated by the novel's central protagonist,
John Irving the 1981 O. Henry Prize Stories collection. In 1985, Irving published "The Cider House Rules". An epic set in a Maine orphanage, the novel's central topic is abortion. Many drew parallels between the novel and Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" (1838). Irving's next novel was "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (1989), another New England family epic about religion set in a New England boarding school and in Toronto, Ontario. The novel was influenced by "The Tin Drum" (1959) by Günter Grass, and the plot contains further allusions to "The Scarlet Letter" (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the works of Dickens. In