SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stuart

 

For once a Man Booker winner that is approachable, readable, memorable and will probably end up a modern classic. I feel that this book has become more famous since people started reading it and recommending it to others. Winning probably helped, but people are no longer reading it because it won, but because it is such a great book. It becomes instantly relatable because it is about a childhood, narrated from the point of view of the child. But it is also hard to relate to because it is a childhood that the vast majority of readers won't have gone through. Thankfully.

Set in the slums and housing estates of Glasgow during the 1980s - what a truly awful existence - Shuggie Bain is a little boy with a horrible life. His mother is an alcoholic, his father has deserted the family. He has an older sister who can't wait to get away, and a brother also desperate to get away. Shuggie is an unusual boy, a bit different from all the other local boys. Constantly teased, bullied and ridiculed, somehow through all the poverty and neglect of his existence, he retains his innate goodness, his hope that things will get better. His shield of self preservation is astounding as is his love for his mother, the only constant in his life. They are all victims of poverty,  lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, living on credit, alcohol their only true escape from the boredom, dreariness, Catholic-Protestant discord, and no hope for the lives of anyone at all to get better. 

The writing is brilliant, achingly beautiful and heart rending. Apparently it is not autobiographical but was inspired by the author's own childhood in working class Glasgow during the 1980s. Maybe this gives it the ring of authenticity, of feeling like the writer is living his own story. The writing is so vivid, the characters so complex. It is horrific and confronting in many places through the story, but also so beautiful and alive. I loved it.