It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.
Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother's sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no' right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.
Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, a blistering debut by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.
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(@picadorbooks, 20 February 2020, ebook, 355 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc)
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I got to read this book at long last. It's been on my TBR list for so long I thought I'd never get a hold of a copy. I've read so many rave reviews I couldn't wait to read it. After being reserved at my library for over six months I devoured it in a few hours. Shuggie Bain is every bit as fantastic as I expected it to be. I loved this book. It reminds me a lot of My Name Is Leon as both deal with boys and mother's in similar circumstances. I loved the fact it's set in Glasgow where I've lived for so many years. The streets Shuggie and his mother walked were familiar. This is a beautiful and incredibly sad book.
