Reviews with content warning for Rape - Shuggie Bain

Going to shelve this for now. I knew it was a dark book going in but I think the subject matter is made more impactful because I was listening to the audiobook.

My DNF is no reflection on the book itself, and more that I don’t think this is the book for me right now. I may try again with a physical copy but the description of the hotel room in Blackpool via audiobook was just too much for me.

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aoifereadsbooks69's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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hilaryreadsbooks's review against another edition

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i’m not ready to let go of shuggie & agnes just like the way shuggie will never be able to let go of agnes. shuggie danced his way into my heart—his softness, his vulnerability, his big words and big love. “what good was a soft boy in a hard world?” shuggie’s half-brother scornfully thinks, but in a way shuggie’s softness is what keeps him alive in this hard world.

there is a scene where shuggie gives in to the way his body aches to move. he dances and dances just to see a smile stretch across his mother’s face. he is, as described, “helpless to stop it”: it’s a part of him, this musicality. and then he looks out the window to see his neighbors laughing & jeering at him, and he falters, but agnes tells him to hold his head high, to keep dancing. and he does. he keeps dancing. stuart throws hardship after hardship, heartbreak after heartbreak, person after person who doesn’t understand shuggie’s softness at this big-hearted boy. and somehow he keeps dancing.

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artemisg's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.0

This book is a very sad, bleak read, but so so good. It follows a poverty-stricken family living in council housing in Thatcher-era Scotland. Now, I was not alive in Thatcher’s time, and I’m not from the United Kingdom, so don’t have a particularly intimate understanding of the political climate of the book, but the combination of my limited knowledge of the era and its consequences, and the state of the ex-mining settlement in this novel, I can come to some conclusions. I understand that this book paints an unfortunately accurate picture of the state of lower- and working-class households at that time. It also paints a heartbreakingly accurate and multi-faceted picture of living with alcoholism, whether that be being the addicted, being the child of the addiction, or simply being surrounded by it.

"Don't make the same mistake as me. She's never going to get better. When the time is right you have to leave. The only thing you can save is yourself."

The story primarily centres around the relationship between Agnes Bain and her youngest son, Shuggie. The other members of the family are expertly depicted and fleshed out - I have to commend Stuart for his incredible character studies, but the story is, at its’ core, a study of the relationship between Shuggie and his mother. It tackles the ideas of loving an alcoholic, being dependent on them, and then suddenly becoming their keeper. It tackles the ideas of having an incredibly insular and co-dependent relationship and how other people can sour that relationship.

She'd looked as happy as he could ever remember, and he was surprised how this hurt. It was all for the red-headed man. He had done what Shuggie was unable to do.

Overall, this is a story about hard times, about needing to be someone you are not, about sacrifices and selfishness, and about how sometimes, love can't get you through everything. A truly incredible debut, beautifully written, filled with multi-faceted and sympathetic characters and complex relationships. So so good.

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