Shuggie Bain is a tummy-punch read for sure.
Douglas Stuart drags you through the grey sky and grit of 1980s Glasgow, beautifully crafted a tale of love between a mother and son. With her smudged lipstick smile: Agnes, a mother perched between pride and the pint, and Shuggie, her steadfast boy who loves like a loyal puppy who’s been kicked one too many times.
While on the surface the plot is deceptively simple: poverty, addiction, and a boy’s determined tenderness. The true beauty is in the textures, you can feel the cold bus-stop wind, smell the hairspray and cigarette ash, hear the clink of coins stolen from the gas metre.
Stuart writes compassion without sentimentality and yet the book is one of the most moving I’ve ever read.
The heart of the book is Agnes, a character who refuses to stop fighting. She’s vain, vulnerable, and vivid. Full of contradictions. In a lesser novel, she’d be cautionary wallpaper. Here, she’s a tragic star, dazzling and devastating by turns. And then there’s Shuggie: tender, smart, odd and stubbornly hopeful. He navigates a world that doesn’t know what to do with his difference, nervously carrying his own quiet glow.
The book wins on so many levels for me, at its core were: the city-as-character effect, Glasgow isn’t a backdrop; it’s a lumbering beast, ready to eat up any that don’t keep moving. The language, rough yet lyrical, and the lack of stereotyping. The men who harm also hurt; the women who wound also protect. It’s messy and painful and beautiful.
It’s by no means an easy read – utterly unflinching, and for some readers the unbroken bleakness may feel like being slowly freezing in a too-thin anorak. It will test your stamina. But the emotional payoff is absolutely earned.
For me it was a book about love. Not the Instagrammable kind, but awful, painful, joyful love that shows up even when it wants to run.
It’s a book for readers who like their fiction with teeth and heart, those who loved Demon Copperhead, or Angela’s Ashes or the social realism of Hanya Yanagihara.
This is a story that bruises and still leaves you grateful, well-deserving of its Booker win. It’s a 5-star read for me.
– Kate Toon
