A review by shelby1994
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

challenging dark sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

 
“Look, ah’m no trying to get ye drunk. Ah’m trying to have ye try a drink.”
“But why?” Agnes was suddenly very tired 
“Because…Because it’s what normal people do.” 

Stuart’s story about two people convinced that they can fake their way to normal made me deeply grateful for our generation’s increased embrace of sobriety. The downside of sobriety becoming “cool” is that mocktails can cost you the same $16 as a cocktail, but the upside is that sober folks are catered to at more and more places, and aren’t seen as begrudging oddities. 

Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Stuart is an expert at exposing the schadenfreude of insular communities. Agnes and Shuggie may be the main characters here, but their community is the prime motivator; it sucks them into its depths and smothers them with its worst intentions. I don’t know that it’s possible to “like” this book - be affected by it, saddened by it, frustrated by it, sure. But I thought it would pull me in more. Maybe I distanced myself from it in the same way that I fail to relate to child-protagonists in movies or shows. I lack the ability to look back and really understand the world through the eyes of a child. And in order to not want to throttle everyone in this book, it requires the willingness to look at a mother through the ever-hopeful eyes of her little son. 


Read If You:
  1. Love Tiffany McDaniel
  2. Want to read about a Scottish community that mirrors the former coal-towns of Appalachia 
  3. Feel like you waited your whole life to find a real friend 

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