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Booker Prize 2020
Shuggie Bain
758 pages
A devastatingly tender portrait of a boy's fierce, unrequited love for his deeply flawed mother amidst a grim, unforgiving world.
What it feels like
Reading this novel is an exercise in profound empathy, immersing you in a world that is as relentlessly bleak as it is fiercely loving. The narrative moves at a steady, deliberate pace, anchoring you in the claustrophobic, gray-skied reality of 1980s Glasgow. It feels like watching a slow-motion tragedy unfold, yet you are held captive by the sheer tenderness of the prose and the unbreakable, desperate devotion of a child to his mother. The language is unsparing but deeply poetic, rendering the harshness of poverty and addiction with a dignity that breaks your heart. It will deeply resonate with readers who crave emotionally devastating, character-driven literary fiction that finds flashes of transcendent beauty in the darkest of places.
- Mood
- gritty
- claustrophobic
- melancholic
- fiercely loving
- Tone
- unflinching
- tender
- empathetic
- bleak
- observant
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- devastation of addiction · unconditional childhood love · working-class poverty · queer awakening · maternal bonds
- The writing
- Lyrical yet unsparing, capturing the harsh Glasgow dialect and grim surroundings with devastating, poetic precision.
- The arc
- Moves from desperate hope and fierce devotion through crushing disappointments to a bittersweet, hard-won independence.
- Who it's for
- Readers who appreciate deeply immersive, character-driven literary fiction that explores the darkest corners of poverty and addiction with profound empathy.
Content notes
- severe alcoholism
- child neglect
- homophobia
- domestic abuse
- sexual assault
- poverty
About the book
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.
Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good—her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits—all the family has to live on—on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes’s older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her—even her beloved Shuggie.
A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.
Description from Open Library.
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