A review by deedireads
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Shuggie Bain is a gutting but beautiful and impressive novel about poverty, addiction, love, and hope.

For you if: You tend to enjoy slower-paced, emotional literary fiction.

FULL REVIEW:


“She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.”


The existence of the book Shuggie Bain is a bit like a fairytale. Written buy a regular guy in between long days in corporate America, inspired by his childhood in poverty, kept close to his chest until he landed his dream agent, rejected by more than 30 publishers…and then it wins the Booker Prize. The BOOKER PRIZE. Can you even??

And, friends, it earned that win. Shuggie Bain is beautifully, heartbreakingly written, with big, round, devastating and hopeful characters who will earn your love a hundred times. It pulled me out of an episode of anxiety-driven restlessness and rooted me to my seat, engrossed.

The book focuses on two main characters: Shuggie, of course, who for most of the book is a child; and his mother, Agnes, who loves hard and holds her head up proudly but gets crushed by poverty, lack of opportunity, and severe alcoholism. 

At its core, this book is about the love and hope between mother and child, devotion, struggle, and resilience. It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s paced pretty slowly, but it’s a beautiful novel that I really enjoyed.

One other thing I’ll share is that the dialogue in this book is written to reflect the Glasgow/Scottish dialect. I found this a little tricky to read on the page, and I also found it tricky to follow in an audiobook. But when I listened to the audio alongside reading the printed book, it all clicked perfectly and really, really enhanced the reading experience for me. I definitely recommend.

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

  • Severe alcoholism
  • Sexual assault and rape
  • Domestic abuse
  • Pedophilia
  • Suicidal attempts
  • Drug use
  • Homophobia and homophobic slurs

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