Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart 🏭
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
-
🏢 The plot: Shuggie Bain is born in Glasgow to beautiful alcoholic Agnes and philandering taxi driver Big Shug Bain. When Big Shug abandons his family in a mining town decimated by Thatcherism, Agnes’s addiction takes hold, and Shuggie grapples not only with his enduring love and concern for his mother, but with the growing awareness in him and everyone around him that he is not a “normal boy”.
-
This is the kind of book that you read and find yourself wondering over and over again if it’s autobiographical, because the characters are so rich and real. It’s not “about” Shuggie Bain in the way that Oliver Twist is “about” Oliver Twist - his adventures and the things that he does - but it is about him in the sense that it’s about the places and the people he comes from, the love and pain informing the decisions that shape his life. Family is at the heart of this novel: the ways in which we inherit things from the people who raise us, but also our separateness as individuals in a fractious society, our inability to be responsible for anyone’s survival but our own. I still don’t know if it’s ultimately optimistic or pessimistic in outlook, but it is moving, and it’s a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time!
-
If I had one complaint, it would be that the novel spends so long contextualising Shuggie that you see relatively little of him as a person, particularly as a teenager. It feels a little anticlimactic - but maybe that’s just me longing for a happy ending for this character!
-
🏘 Read it if you like character-driven novels that explore hard-hitting social history, written in accessible prose. Also to pick up random bits of Glaswegian slang!
-
🚫 BIG avoid if you are sensitive to scenes of rape, assault, alcoholism, and child sexual assault. I would urge anyone doubtful to carefully check TWs before reading as it can get quite graphic. This is also not a very plot-driven book so avoid if that’s not your thing.

Content Warnings

leah_is_dudish's review

Go to review page

dark sad medium-paced

4.0

Bleak af

Content Warnings

carrielucas's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Honestly it was just way too sad for me. Also had, like, every trigger in the book. Is this the new A Little Life?

Content Warnings

nataliemason's review

Go to review page

4.0

Content Warnings

jaydadanielle's review

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

jstor's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

suprita's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

Want to read a book that gives you the big sad? Look no further coz Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain has everything you’re looking for and then some.

Shuggie Bain is a compelling, story about a dysfunctional family- an absent father, an alcoholic mother, siblings who are too busy keeping themselves afloat and Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a lonely confused kid, bullied and picked on for being different, trying his hardest to be “normal” and getting his mother out of the hopeless life they’re living. Also Shuggie hopelessly worships his alcoholic mother.

Douglas Stuart has no time for sugarcoating harsh realities and softening its blows with pretty words. He lays down a Margaret Thatcher era Glasgow, in all its poverty stricken glory- its streets reeking of unemployment, crime, drugs and alcohol- for you to look at, and once you’ve taken your first glance (rephrase this, it sounds off), you can’t look away. The story consumes you, overpowers you and settles somewhere deep within you. You can feel the pain and despair seeping through the pages into your very bones, chilling you. It’s all sharp edges and ugly consequences. Demons come in all forms in this book- both internal and external, in the form of people and feelings. I mean, how much do you love someone who is a hindrance to your personal growth, and where do you draw the line when that person is your mother? How much care can you expect from someone who themselves need care?

As hopeless as it sounds the book is about characters who’re always hoping. There’s Agnes, hoping for a better life and then there’s Shuggie who hopes that his mother gets better.

The two things that did not fit well in the book for me were, first, the stress on Agnes’ beauty and how people react to it. It somewhere furthers the notion that women deserve sympathy only if they’re beautiful. And second is the last chapter, it just did not fit at all with the story. I felt like it was a rushed, half hearted happy-ending that was included to give readers some respite at the end.

By the time I finished this one I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, but there was also the sense of having been through something big with these characters, which for me is the ultimate thing with books, they should move you.

Content Warnings

zoreads's review

Go to review page

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

More...