Will I love Shuggie Bain?

I loved the Glaswegian (quasi-Irish!) voice of Shuggie Bain, but what I will always remember it for is its gut-wrenching depiction of the consequences of poverty and alcoholism for the titular child character. 

There were times when I was reading this novel that I literally flinched from it. It’s one of the most poignant times that I can remember having such a visceral reaction to a book. 

What I found truly remarkable was the book’s sense of simultaneous inevitability and hope. At once, I felt that there was only one possible end for Agnes and Shuggie, and yet I also… show more.

A harrowing and compelling read about difficult lives lived in unforgiving and often brutal circumstances.

Shuggie Bain invades the senses: You smell the sour breath of Shuggie’s mum as she snores, open-mouthed, in a drunken stupor; you feel the stiffness of the rug where endless spilled drinks were left to dry. Just as important, you feel the push-and-pull of love and despair, hope and anger, as Shuggie grows up, the youngest child of an alcoholic who is ultimately abandoned by the rest of their family. The final chapters, as Shuggie moves into adolescence and struggles to break from the burden of becoming caretaker to the woman who should have been taking care of him, are… show more.

This book won the 2020 Booker Prize, this heart-wrenching and unforgettable story describes the life of a family living in public housing in Glasgow in the 1980s. I felt as though I’d met some of these people. I certainly knew people like them, and recognised the landscape in which they lived. Despite the very real trauma experienced by the characters throughout, this novel shows the endurance and hope sparked by friendship and love.

This beautifully written coming-of-age novel is the story of a young boy living in poverty in 1980s Glasgow with his alcoholic mother. It is epically and inevitably tragic, but I was transfixed and uplifted by the ferocious love the main character, Shuggie, has for his mother, Agnes, and she for him. When I finished the book it was as if the author has given me a gift. Shuggie endures so much but despite his turbulent home life he manages to transcend it, escape, and make a life for himself. It’s an incredible and exquisitely wrought tale of survival.

As Shuggie Bain comes of age, he learns some terrible truths—his mother is an alcoholic. His cab-driving father is a wild womanizer. And his older brother and sister can’t do much about any of it. Shuggie and his older siblings have two goals: survival and escape. But Shuggie takes on a third mission. He will save his mother. Make her well and leave the booze behind. What would it be like to wear this kid’s shoes? To battle such a potent enemy? To weather the neighbors’ harsh indifference? And to top it all, question your sexuality before you even understand… show more.

I love this novel for personal as well as literary reasons and I can’t separate the two. It’s by a Scottish writer, and it’s a debut, as if Douglas Stuart waited until he could write this story perfectly. Maybe he also had to wait for courage; Shuggie Bain, although not autobiographical, is personal to the author. The realities and humiliations of alcoholism, poverty, and love are written unembellished, put on record from a child’s point of view. It’s a hard, unsentimental love that triumphs, imperfectly – Shuggie at the end is still terrifyingly vulnerable. This is where it gets… show more.

This international bestseller and 2021 Booker winner is an easy pick. Shuggie Bain is heart-wrenching, bleak, hopeful, subtle, and bombastic in equal measure, but for anyone who grew up in Glasgow and its outskirts in the 1980s Stuart forensically captures the true essence of the working class struggle.  

This is raw true to life story of a young boy being brought up in 80’s Glasgow to a single parent. It was a touching account of Shuggie and his siblings as they fought to support their alcoholic single mom and the prospects of a poor Glaswegian family. I related to this story as I grew up in a poor family in the west end of Glasgow in the 60’s. The book transported me back to a world of grey tenement buildings where the whole community lived in poverty, with my friends’ fathers’ battling the same alcohol addiction as Shuggie’s… show more.