Shuggie Bain
The Million-Copy Bestseller & Winner of the Booker Prize
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Shuggie Bain
Narrated by:
Angus King
Buy Now for £12.09
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Narrated by:
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Angus King
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By:
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Douglas Stuart
Summary
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE
WINNER OF 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' AND 'DEBUT OF THE YEAR' AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER
'An amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.' – The judges of the Booker Prize
'Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.' – The Observer
'Shuggie Bain means so much to me. It is such a powerfully written story . . . I love a heartbreak book but there is so much love within this one, particularly between Shuggie and his mother Agnes.' – Dua Lipa
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and 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, he is clearly 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.
Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. For readers of A Little Life and Angela's Ashes, it is a heartbreaking novel by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.
'A heartbreaking novel' – The Times
'Tender and unsentimental . . . The Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.' – Daily Mail
Critic reviews
A heartbreaking novel, a book both beautiful and brutal . . . All that grief and sadness and misery has been turned into something tough, tender and beautifully sad.
Leaves us gutted and marvelling: Life may be short, but it takes forever.
I think it’s the best first book I’ve read in many years. (Karl Ove Knausgård)
Rarely does a debut novel establish its world with such sure-footedness, and Stuart’s prose is lithe, lyrical and full of revelatory descriptive insights. (Alex Preston)
An astonishing portrait, drawn from life, of a society left to die . . . Shuggie Bain has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. In a just world, it would win.
Shuggie Bain comes from a deep understanding of the relationship between a child and a substance-abusing parent, showing a world rarely portrayed in literary fiction . . . Admirable and important. (Sarah Moss)
This is a dysfunctional love story . . . between a boy and his mother . . . what makes his book a worthy contender for the Booker is his portrayal of their bond, together with all its perpetual damage.
Douglas Stuart’s startling Glasgow-set debut novel creates a world of poverty and suffering offset by pure, heart-filling, love . . . It’s a novel that deserves, and will surely often get, a second reading. (Allan Massie)
Shuggie Bain is a novel that aims for the heart and finds it. (John Self)
Tender and unsentimental . . . and the Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.
Beautiful and bleak but with enough warmth and optimism to carry the reader through. (Graham Norton (via Twitter))
A boy's heartbreaking love for his mother . . . as intense and excruciating to read as any novel I have ever held in my hand . . . The book’s evocative power arises out of the author’s talent for conjuring a place, a time, and the texture of emotion . . . brilliantly written.
An outstanding book . . . Magnificently done . . . Wonderful. (Lee Child)
A debut novel that reads like a masterpiece, Shuggie Bain gives voice to the kind of helpless, hopeless love that children can feel toward broken parents.
This heartfelt and harrowing debut novel – which has been compared to the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, and which Kirkus has already called “a masterpiece” . . . is rightly being heralded for its visceral, emotionally nuanced portrayal of working class Scottish life and its blazingly intimate exploration of a mother-son relationship.
A formidable story, lyrically told, about intimacy, family, and love. (12 Best Books of 2020 So Far)
Utter respect
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Poor lives but rich story
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great story definitely worth buying
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Set in 1980s post-industrial Glasgow, Shuggie (Hugh) Bain is a young man who has been treated as being ‘not quite right’ by most of the people in his life, including his own family. We first meet him when he is in his mid-teens, stuck in a dead end job and living on his own in a rented room in a boarding house, surrounded by his mother’s china ornaments and looking back on his life.
Shuggie is the victim of appalling poverty, abuse and the whims of an alcoholic mother and philandering father. His extended family live in a Glasgow tenement and Shuggie’s mother Agnes dreams of a better life than the one she found with her second husband. Agnes is stuck in a rut of domestic boredom and drudgery (“none of her men ever wanted her to work”) childcare and the jealousy of other women who want to drag her down. She looks like Elizabeth Taylor, loves clothes and likes Shuggie and her other children to speak nicely. Shuggie adores his mother and siblings but always feels out of place, growing up in a world of bullying, toxic masculinity and alcohol-fuelled social lives.
When Shuggie’s father finds them a new home on the outskirts of Glasgow, Agnes thinks she is being presented with a fresh start with her unfaithful husband; she believes that the family will be happy away from the claustrophobic life of the tenements and the divisions caused by religion. But Agnes’ dreams are shattered when she finds herself in an impoverished pit village, in a shabby council flat surrounded by hostile neighbours who instantly find Agnes both a threat and an object of derision. Shuggie too is mocked and shunned by the local children because of his nice clothes, his way of speaking and his declaration that he couldn’t possibly live in such a place, thereby condemning himself to a state of otherness and a life of being bullied.
Agnes’ husband leaves the family immediately and her life begins to unravel into alcoholism, poverty, benefits culture, social exclusion and an increasingly dangerous descent into exploitative sexual behaviour. One by one, Agnes’ children give up on the fight to save her from herself and they escape from the family home to find safety and some form of normal life, leaving Shuggie to cope alone.
I became totally engrossed in Shuggie’s life, partly because the narrator managed to make this grim world come alive and seem very real. By the end of the novel I was heartbroken for Shuggie and his family. This is a reading experience that will stay with me for a long time.
Tragic and heartbreaking. Utterly believable. 5*
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As soon as the book was released in August I went out and bought the hardback version because this is a book I will treasure forever. Of course, it is a book about adversity and some of the moments feel so desolate that I was moved to tears but the standard of writing is a joy and the story is so engaging that it’s hard to put down
I gave the book to my daughter to read – she is a very well read young woman and she declared this a modern masterpiece, rare praise indeed from her. It really is a truly remarkable work and possibly one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, certainly one of the best audiobooks I have ever purchased
How I wish there were a sequel because Shuggie became so real to me that I want to know that he’s okay out there
A rare masterpiece
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