Shuggie Bain

If you don't know anything about the effects of alcoholism and the grip it can have on an individual, read this and you will become educated. If you're curious about Scotland, and what life might have been like for the lower-working class in the 80s, this story gives you much to ponder.

Where do I start? Maybe with the strength of the writing. As in, I had an actual physical reaction to some scenes. Stuart described Agnes's misery so well when she was suffering from too much drink, I sometimes felt queasy, the hallmark of excellent writing. How absolutely unreal it was to read this and to know it was his debut.

This story of a young boy whose mother is suffering from alcoholism gives a sharp and unflinching view of how the disease show more affects every one around her, even those who don't care about her. It is an on the page train wreck and you can't look away from it, no matter how tough the scenes. You see the addiction mostly through Agnes's and Shuggie's eyes.

Shuggie, or Hugh Bain, named after his father, is the youngest of the children. Catherine, the eldest, has the wisdom and foresight to escape early on. She washes her hands of the whole mess. Leek, the middle child, is an unrealized artist. He often takes off to his hideout. While he tries to protect Shuggie not only from the "scheme's" bullies, but from their mother's episodes, he can only do so much. He is the only one working, and without what little he makes, the "dole" is never going to be enough.

The relationship between Shuggie and his mother is something to behold. He loves her unconditionally, cares for her in the ways a boy shouldn't have to, but does because he is compassionate, and perhaps knows Agnes better than anyone.

As well, Shuggie knows he's different, feels different, but he can't explain himself. Leek tries to show him how to walk, and Shuggie practices, but Shuggie's deeply rooted awareness goes beyond mannerisms, speech and actions.

As an aside, there were many words and cultural aspects I thought fascinating. For instance, the word scheme was used a lot and after looking it up, I found that it's a derogatory term for public housing - which is also called "council housing." The word wee was used often and so were many other words, like "no'' for "not," and "dinnae" for "didn't" All of it was very natural and I could hear them speaking in the dialect as I read. Every so often I found myself inserting "wee" into my own thoughts, like I'll just put it on the wee table, or, I'll just step outside for a wee bit. Imagine, a Southern Scottish accent.

Many every day services like hot water, watching the television, (telly) etc., were run off of meters. You had to put money in the meters to have these things, and Agnes, Shuggie and the others were always breaking them open to steal coins to either pay for her alcohol, the taxi, or sometimes food. A popular food seemed to be "tinned custard."

Bit by bit, there is the descent. The perpetual rise and the inevitable fall. The hope, despair, restarts, do-overs, umpteen failures and a few wins. The abusiveness to mind and body, and not to only Agnes, but to Leek as well, and most especially to Shuggie, because, "if you're no' a wee girl, then you must be a wee poof. Are ye a wee poof?"

A disturbing, yet fascinating story with what felt almost like a private peek into the lives of a family. Such a heavy, dark story - and of course - I loved it. show less

Agnes had so many hopes for her life. Her first husband was simply a disappointment, too well-behaved, too boring. With Shug Bain things could be different. But soon she wakes up still in her childhood room with her parents, aged 39 and mother of three kids. Shug promises a better life and rents them a home in a run-down public housing area on the outskirts of Glasgow. Yet, Shug does not really move in with his family, he is driving his taxi more and more often and spends his free time with other women. Soon enough, Agnes finds comfort in alcohol, her new neighbourhood is the perfect place to drown your thoughts and worries in cans of beer. Shuggie’s older brother Leek and his sister Catherine can distance themselves from their always show more intoxicated mother, yet, Shuggie is too young and for years, he hopes that one days, Agnes will be sober and they will have a life like any normal family.

Douglas Stuart’s novel is really heart-wrenching. You follow Shuggie’s childhood in the 1980s, a time when life was hard for many working class families who often did not know how to make ends meet which drove many fathers and mothers to alcohol. Shuggie’s love for his mother is unconditional, he is too young to understand the mechanisms behind her addiction and to see what it does not only to her but also to him. It would be too easy to blame Agnes for the misery she brings to herself and her son, she too is a victim of the time she lives in and the society that surrounds her. Industrial times are over in Scotland and the formerly working class turn into a new underclass.

It is not the plot that stands out in this novel, actually, all that happens is a downward spiral of alcoholism and decay that leads to the necessary end one would expect. Much more interesting are the two main characters, mother and son, and their development throughout the novel. Agnes tries to preserve her pride, to be the glamorous and beautiful woman she has once been and who has always attracted men even when times get tough. She keeps her chin up as long as she can – at least when she happens to be sober.

Already at a young age Shuggie has to learn that life will not offer him much. His family’s poverty and his mother’s addiction would be enough challenge in life. However, the older he gets, the more unsure he becomes about who he actually is. As a young boy, he prefers playing with girls’ toys and later he does not really develop an interest in girls either which makes him an easy target of bullying. No matter how deep his mother sinks, he always hopes for better days, days with his father, days without hunger. He is good at observing and even better at doing what is expected of him. He learns quickly how to behave around the different men in their home, how to hide his life from the outside world. In Leanne, he finally finds somebody who can understand him because she herself leads exactly the same life. They only long to be normal, yet, a normal life is not something that their childhood has been destined to.

Quite often you forget how young Shuggie is, his life is miserable but he has perfectly adapted to the circumstances. Douglas Stuart provides insight in a highly dysfunctional family where you can nevertheless find love and affection. It is clear that there is no escape from this life which makes it totally depressing. Somehow, the novel reminds me of the “Kitchen Sink” dramas with the only difference of being set in the 1980s and shown from a female perspective. Agnes is not the angry young woman; she is the desperate middle-aged mother whose dreams are over and who provides only one example to her son: do not expect anything from life or anybody.

An emotionally challenging novel due to its unforgiving realism. show less

Midlife memoirs -- the kind where people survive incredibly irresponsible parents, awful bad luck, or unimaginably unjust social conditions -- and live to tell and write about it, are a guilty pleasure of mine. This made it surprisingly difficult for me to figure out what I thought about "Suggie Bain." On a purely literary level, it's easy to admire. Stuart shapes his characters with genuine care, conveying the emotional impact of each character's misfortunes without sinking into pity or melodrama. He sneaks Scots dialect into the text effectively, using words that the Oxford hasn't heard of without making his characters into north-of-the-Tyne caricatures. And, somehow, he makes the story of the Bain clan something other than horribly show more depressing to read about. I won't go into details here, but the barest plot outline will tell you why that's an achievement in itself. In the hands of a less gifted writer, "Suggie Bain" would be ham-handed poverty porn, and, quite frankly, the books setting is so grey and lifeless and so many of its characters so obviously doomed from the very outset that I'm not completely sure that, at some level, it isn't. Readers will have to make up their own minds there.

But there are other, more interesting reasons to like "Shuggie Bain." The novel works wonderfully as a sort of architectural and structural critique. The word "brutalism" is never mentioned here, but it's clear that the author has it in his sights. We hear about grey, blocky buildings, lifeless housing developments, the lunar landscape of the coal pits. This novel's characters seem to be trapped into whatever the opposite of Le Corbusier's "machines for living" would be: they're stuck trying to live human lives in what are obviously inhuman environments. By showing their as-often-as-not struggle to make a home out of obviously desolate environments, Bain's taking aim at several decades -- maybe several generations -- of meticulously planned but ultimately unsuccessful social development. This makes "Shuggie Bain" a political work in the best sense of the word.

The other reason I rather liked this one is that it's a wonderful exploration of gay difference that makes a deliberate choice to avoid this theme's most familiar tropes. Shuggie is certainly treated badly for being a young gay man, but the hostility he faces seems to be of a piece with his environment's general hostility to difference and non-conformity. The novel's set in the eighties, but we don't hear anything about the AIDS epidemic: Shuggie and his family are so socially isolated that they seem to exist well apart from those headlines. Lastly, you could argue that Shuggie's gayness -- his softness, his lack of interest in typical male pursuits, his unwillingness to be explicitly aggressive toward others -- that saves him from the fate that awaits so many of his hetero peers. In this, "Shuggie Bain" rather reminded me of Justin Torres's "We the Animals," which isn't, to be honest, half the novel that "Shuggie Bain" is, but which also presents queerness as an unexpected means of escape. And escape is something that Shuggie -- and everyone in the novel -- certainly needs. This one can be a long, harrowing reading experience, but it still comes recommended. show less

This book explores the impact of poverty, alcoholism, and abuse on a family living in Glasgow in the 1980s. Shuggie is the young son of Agnes and Big Shug. Much of the book is focused on Agnes and the impact of her drinking. Big Shug is an abusive philanderer who abandons them. Shuggie endures bullying because he is different. It is the story of a severely dysfunctional family.

The writing is strong, and the story is heart-wrenching. My heart went out to Shuggie and I wanted to protect him. I felt like berating the guy who talked a person in recovery into drinking again to appear “normal.” There is little hope and lots of pain.

I think each reader needs to evaluate how much misery he or she can handle before embarking on this book. show more I have a difficult time reading about situations where adults mistreat children, and this book falls into that category. It contains many forms of abuse, abandonment, suicide, molestation, rape, homophobia, the downward spiral of addiction, and I am sure more that I have blocked out.

I listened to the audio, which is brilliantly read by Angus King. It is hard for me to rate such a book. The author’s writing evoked strong feelings of compassion, but also of acute distress. It was hard to listen to 17 hours of an innocent child’s suffering and I almost abandoned it. I wish more of it had been similar to the last chapter – it has a much less oppressive tone. There are many glowing reviews, so please check them out. This book won the Booker Prize in 2020. show less

In retrospect, I really wish I’d read this with a side of wine. Or possibly antidepressants. What a bleak story! Well told, but bleak as all heck. My first bit of advice: save this for a time in your life when you are feeling emotionally resilient and able to handle all the despair.

Why bleak? Because the people in this novel are trapped in cycles of poverty, abuse, and exhaustion over which they have almost no control, thanks to psychological factors (cruelty and despair are ingrained in them from the earliest age), social factors (attempts to escape are all-too-often thwarted jealous peers), economic factors (rent controls ensure that they always end up in economically depressed areas, no matter how many times they move), and a show more religion (Catholicism) that makes it impossible to escape brutal marriages or leverage any control over unending pregnancies that merely escalate the poverty, abuse, and exhaustion noted above.

This novel focuses specifically on the plight of Agnes, lucky enough to be born with beauty and some aspiration, and her unusually empathetic and gentle son Hugh. (The fact that Hugh is gay doesn’t really impact the story, except to underscore the extent to which he is unsuited for survival in this blighted dystopia.) We pray that Agnes’s beauty will be enough to attract a man able to lift her from her predestined misery and that, once given an opportunity, her aspiration will be strong enough to sustain her. We pray that Hugh will survive the brutish conditions of his childhood before all the gentleness is crushed out of him. But, honestly, what are the chances of these things happening in a culture that doesn’t even blink at fathers raping their daughters, at husbands beating their wives to death, at parents starving their children in order to spend their weekly food allowance on booze, or at cuckolded husbands casually murdering babes that aren’t theirs?

Forget that this is set in 1980s Glasgow – subtract the Catholicism and you’re left with a morality play that is both timeless and universal. According to the blurb, this is supposed to be a “heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love.” I would argue that this is a heartbreaking story about what happens when you strip any race, class or caste of humans of opportunity and dignity. Sex may provide some temporary diversion, and alcohol/drugs some temporary forgetfulness, but the only hope of escape is selfless love, and what are the chances of that happening? Stuart keeps stringing us along, making us hope that least one of the relationships in this novel will save our blighted protagonists ... but you might want to keep those antidepressants at the ready just in case. show less

I loved this book. Yes, it was a difficult read at times with all the addictions, poverty and other issues. Ultimately, I think it is a story about resilience and perseverance -- about playing the hand you've been dealt, even when/if striving for better.

The writing was amazing. Even in the midst of all the despair, there were funny moments, like Shuggie practicing how to walk like a man. And there were heart-stopping moments such as when teen-aged Leek saw his biological father with his new family. And when Wullie asked Lizzie "What baby?"

Recommended highly.

Heartbreaking saga of a young boy trying to grow up amidst abject poverty and an alcoholic mother. The sadness comes from the child’s eternal belief that he can make his beloved mother better, which of course, he can’t. Stuart’s writing is compelling and amazingly descriptive so as to make the reader feel, smell and sense the hopelessness of Shuggie’s existence and the environment in which he and his mother struggle.