Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize ‘Shuggie Bain’ is the debut novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart. The book, which draws on Stuart’s own life, is set in 1980s Glasgow and is startling, gritty, heartbreaking and often moving. It portrays the brutality of living in Glasgow while Thatcherism left the city in poverty, forcing shipyards and mines to close resulting in high levels of unemployment.
Shuggie Bain is the youngest of three children and he is a quiet, scared and effeminate boy who becomes his mother’s carer. Although the book is named after him it mainly focuses on his mother, Agnes Bain, and her struggles with alcoholism. Agnes is a beautiful, stylish and proud woman, the daughter of two Catholics and married to the abusive Shug. Agnes was previously married to a Catholic man who adored her but she left him, taking their two children Catherine and Leek, for the charismatic Protestant taxi-driver, Shug, and they moved in with her parents. Agnes and Shug have a strained and volatile relationship, he is angered by her drinking and is not only unfaithful but physically abusive towards her.
Agnes yearns for more from life - she wants to move out of her parent's house and have a house she can be proud of with her husband and family. Shug promises her that life, but instead gives up on her and dumps her and the children in a mining scheme called Pithead where everyone is suffering from the mine closures.
It is while living here that Shuggie realises he doesn’t quite fit in. The other kids bully him relentlessly, calling him a “poofter” and they even get physically abusive towards him. Without the support of his grandparents or even his father’s presence, he becomes more withdrawn and rarely leaves his mother, not even for school. His older sister marries and moves to South Africa where her husband can find work and his brother works as an apprentice, so it falls to Shuggie to care for Agnes.
Throughout the book there are glimmers of hope as she attends Alcoholics Anonymous and manages to stay sober for periods, however, no detail is spared by Stuart about the gritty reality of having a substance-abusing parent
This story is bleak and despite the brutality of the setting it is handled with tenderness and there is a central theme of love. There are moments of dark humour and the characters all feel very real, they all have their flaws, but you cannot help but empathise with them and hope that their situation will improve.
Although many have pointed out poor editing and have claimed Stuart is heavy-handed with his prose he uses incredible imagery throughout which helps spark the reader’s imagination such as this line “The morning light was the colour of too-milky tea”.
The language can be difficult at times particularly if you are not familiar with the Glaswegian dialect, however, it truly is an unforgettable and intimate story about the love between a mother and her son.
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