Nov 22

Nov 22 Shuggie Bain

Author: Douglas Stuart
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good — her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits — all the family has to live on — on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her — even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

TL;DR Review

Shuggie Bain is a gutting but beautiful and impressive novel about poverty, addiction, love, and hope.

For you if: You tend to enjoy slower-paced, emotional literary fiction.

Full Review

“She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.”

The existence of the book Shuggie Bain is a bit like a fairytale. Written by a regular guy in between long days in corporate America, inspired by his childhood in poverty, kept close to his chest until he landed his dream agent, rejected by more than 30 publishers…and then it wins the Booker Prize. The BOOKER PRIZE. Can you even??

And, friends, it earned that win. Shuggie Bain is beautifully, heartbreakingly written, with big, round, devastating and hopeful characters who will earn your love a hundred times. It pulled me out of an episode of anxiety-driven restlessness and rooted me to my seat, engrossed.

The book focuses on two main characters: Shuggie, of course, who for most of the book is a child; and his mother, Agnes, who loves hard and holds her head up proudly but gets crushed by poverty, lack of opportunity, and severe alcoholism.

At its core, this book is about the love and hope between mother and child, devotion, struggle, and resilience. It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s paced pretty slowly, but it’s a beautiful novel that I really enjoyed.

One other thing I’ll share is that the dialogue in this book is written to reflect the Glasgow/Scottish dialect. I found this a little tricky to read on the page, and I also found it tricky to follow in an audiobook. But when I listened to the audio alongside reading the printed book, it all clicked perfectly and really, really enhanced the reading experience for me. I definitely recommend.