Shuggie Bain

Even though I made it nearly 2/5 into this big book and rather enjoy Shuggie, I will still stop here, as it broadly just has too much misery and too many unlikeable characters. It's a mood thing, not a quality thing.

Diepe treurnis, met nauwelijks ergens een sprankje hoop. Hugh (“Shuggie”) groeit op als jongste kind van Agnes. Zij heeft een behoorlijk drankprobleem, en alhoewel goed in “keeping up appearances”, kan ze niet voorkomen dat ze langzaam afglijdt naar haar voortijdig einde.

Het boek is doorspekt met Iers? Schots? (het zijn ze Ierse katholieken die wonen in een treurige buurt van Glasgow ten tijde van de mijnsluitingen) wat het lezen soms wat lastig maakt, maar als je het fonetisch probeert kom je een eind...

““That's nice of ye to say,” replied Nan with a thin smile. “Why don't ye shove yer arms up yer arse and gie yer insides a big hug from me.””

De kinderen doen hun best om de boel draaiende te houden, maar kunnen uiteindelijk ook niks anders doen dan wegvluchten, zodat op het eind Shuggie het zelf allemaal moet zien te rooien. Dat Shuggie “anders” is dan de andere kinderen in de buurt maakt het er allemaal niet vrolijker op.

“Shuggie heard the nurse say to a male attendant that she thought for sure Agnes was a working girl. “She is not,” said Shuggie, quite proudly. “My mother has never worked a day in her life. She's far too good-looking for that.””

“Sister Meechan's hand wavered awkwardly in the air, unaccustomed to not being in command. “Ye are a very tidy little boy.” “My mother says it doesn't cost anything to take pride in your appearance.” With a glance down the hallway she asked, “So was that wummin yer mammy?” Shuggie nodded. “Uh-huh.” He looped the chain around his fingers and stole a glance up at her kind face. “It's OK, though. You don't have to like her. Sometimes she drinks from underneath the kitchen sink. Nobody really likes her then.”

Maar goed, terechte winnaar van de Booker Prize. Na afloop iets luchtigs lezen :-)

The Story of Shuggie and Agnes is one that will linger in my mind for a long time. The author masterfully evokes deep emotions, making me feel both frustrated by Agnes's poor choices and heartbroken over Shuggie's fate. It's no surprise this book won the Booker Prize. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves literary fiction!

Bleak.

3,5 - 4/ 5

Tarina alholismista ja siitä kuinka se voi tuhota kokonaisen perheen. Sekä pienen pojan uskollisuudesta vanhempaansa kohtaan ja toivosta parempaan huomiseen.

Kirja oli sujuvasti kirjoitettu sekä käännetty. Henkilöhahmot olivat mielenkiintoisia, niin Bainin perhe kuin kylän muut asukkaat.

Olisin ehkä kaivannut enemmän myös tarinaa Shuggien elämästä nuorena aikuisena, mutta tykkäsin toisaalta myös siitä, miten kirja loppui.

Heartbreaking but brilliant

You will need ample courage to get through “Shuggie Bain,” but the raw emotional honesty of the story is well worth it. Goes well with any Frightened Rabbit record of your choice since you're Feeling Things anyway.

Oh my god, SHUGGGIEEEE. This book is sad, in the most beautiful way. It had me in a chokehold, it had me in tears, I loved it, it was great.

Read this also a little bit in preparation of finally starting A Little Life, because I feel like you cannot JUST read that book

Brutal, full of misery and suffering, but also full of beauty and hope. The penultimate chapter broke me. Probably the best thing I've read this year.

Throwing in the towel. It's not poorly written or offensive, but it is tedious. Poverty and alcoholism suck, yes. Yes, it is difficult being gay, especially a few decades ago. I didn't find this insightful or unique or educational in any way, and it's almost 500 pages long.

two kids talk about their inebriated mothers. one of them says something along the lines of: that's what alcoholics want — to die. it's just that some take the long road.

and: there is nothing you can do to help.

Shuggie Bain is a book about losing one's self to the coldness of addiction. losing what you were and what you could be, and losing the people you care about.

it is also about finding oneself. or rather, finding out that you are not actually lost, you just are. and you should start owning your self.


i liked this book. it is an emotional story. a good story, in its tragedy and realism.

The misery in this book is unrelenting. The working class in 1980's Glasgow endure unemployment and resulting poverty with a judgmental outlook that punishes anyone who stands out as getting above themselves, and cruelty to anyone perceived as weak or vulnerable. In the midst of all this is the Bain family. Their mother, Agnes Bain, left her marriage to an upstanding but boring man to marry Hugh Bain (Shug), a volatile, womanizing taxi driver who beat her and eventually abandoned her. She becomes an alcoholic. Her two older children get out of the house as soon as they can, but her youngest, Shuggie, dotes on her and tries to protect her from herself. Shuggie is vulnerable because he is a delicate boy, particular about his dress and his speech, and he prefers to play with dolls and other girls' things rather than sports. The book follows Shuggie and his mother as Shuggie grows up. There are moments of kindness and beauty, but they make the misery that inevitably follows that much more heartbreaking. I kept reading, though, because I hoped for some redemption. It was hard won and subtle, but it eventually came. I think this is a really fine novel.

Un très beau roman qui nous plonge à Glasgow dans les années 1980, à la rencontre de Shuggie, un jeune garçon différent issu d'un milieu défavorisé, entre sa mère alcoolique, un père plus souvent absent que présent, et son frère et sa soeur aînés qui n'attendent qu'une seule chose : pouvoir fuir le domicile familial.

C'est tragique, parfois glauque, mais aussi plein d'amour. Pas de l'amour façon bons sentiments qui dégoulinent de guimauve, de l'amour triste mais sincère, profond. Celui d'un fils pour sa mère qu'il essaye de sauver de ses démons et qu'il aime malgré tout. Celui d'un grand frère frustré de ne pas pouvoir l'aider à fuir à son tour cette situation infernale.

C'est vraiment un très beau premier roman pour Douglas Stuart, dont je vais m'empresser de lire son deuxième roman, que j'imagine autant autobiographique que celui-ci.

Beautiful, sad, poignant book.

My eyes are a little moist. What a novel. It captures Glasgow as a character perfectly.

This is a hard one to leave a rating/review for. I wouldn't say that I enjoyed it, but it was a good story. Depressing and infuriating as hell, but it was well written and I found myself wanting to finish the book despite the bad feeling it left in me.

This got loads of positive reviews and I was worried it was over-hyped. Glad to say I was wrong, this was a really good debut novel.
It's a story of a family falling apart as the mother's loses herself in her alcoholism. Shuggie adores his mother despite the drink and will do anything for her.
The darkness and depression of Glasgow's poverty-stricken underbelly are reflected in the themes. It's really not a happy book although there's a slight whiff of positivity at the end.
It reminded me a bit of Angela's Ashes but I was more enthused by this as it's set in my adopted home. I enjoyed Stuart's blending of the broad Glesca patter with his poetic prose.
It's not my usual sort of read but I'm glad I gave it a go and it definitely deserves all the plaudits.

When I first started Shuggie Bain, I didn't get it. But around 200 pages in, I became obsessed. This is one of those tales that I often struggle to get into as I'm not sure where it's going or what the point of it is. Then one event happens or it suddenly clicks inside me that I'm not supposed to be waiting for a rising plot, I'm supposed to be encompassing all of the mini-plots unraveling within the story and squishing them together into one amazing tale. This is Shuggie Bain. Shuggie Bain is also pain, sorrow, sadness and brutal honesty. It's a must-read but features a fair few trigger warnings.

Welp. This is one majorly depressing read. The book does an excellent job of transporting the reader to 1980s Glasgow, in the home(s) of an alcoholic single mother — and for that reason, I personally didn't find it to be an enjoyable escape. It does an excellent job of getting the reader to feel what it's like to have an alcoholic parent in the poorest parts of the city, and the struggles of drug and alcohol abuse and joblessness in the Thatcher era. You find yourself rooting for Agnes each time she gets sober, all the while with the sinking knowledge it won't last. You find yourself feeling deeply, deeply sad for the queer boy who loves his mother despite it all, maybe because he doesn't fit in anywhere else.

While the story is immersive and compelling, the lower rating is purely because I found it a bit tedious at times;I think it's long and drags on, but that did add to the endless feeling of the cycles of poverty and alcoholism. I found the Glasgowegian vernacular to be almost as difficult to read as it is to hear, but it got easier as the book went along, and certainly added to the authenticity.

I really didn't want to read this. The black and white cover and the story of a Glasgow boy growing up gay with his alcoholic mother. Literary misery porn parading gay suffering. When it wins the Booker it only confirms my suspicions about how inevitably bleak and dire the story would surely be. And then I'm tasked to review it for the Booktube Prize so I begrudgingly pick it up.

I'm immediately hooked. Shuggie is growing up in council housing surrounded by unemployed miners, dirty faced kids, drunken gossips and folks prying open electric meters to steal the coins within. Meanwhile Shuggie's mom is drinking herself into a stupor, screaming into the telephone, raging against the men she's hard done by, putting her head into the oven, setting the bedroom on fire, and driving away her two eldest children. Agnes is just a huge character on the page. Despite her faults Shuggie remains steadfast, can see the effort she puts into appearances, her fierce unbroken pride that stands with her back straight even as she's sinking in the grey.

It's less gay trauma and more the resilience of love even in the face of a challenging person, clear eyed about their flaws and faults and loving them just the same. It's heartbreaking but comes from a place not intent on mining Agnes or Shuggie's misery in some showy literary way but instead a confident portrayal - warts and all - of a complicated woman. Pure gallus.

3.5

greetin

I heard the Audible version and it is superb. The Glasgow accent takes some time to get accustomed to. But once it's on track, the novel grows into you and eats you away. It is a gritty rendering of the toxic relationship between Shuggie Bain and his alcoholic mother and all the hell they go through.

This really hit home for me, having grown up as the child of an addict. The circumstances were different, but it captured the anxiety, the worrying, the way I could never enjoy the good moments because I didn't know if they were real or how long they would last. It was a hard read, but there was beauty in the pain.

Beautiful writing, painful story. If I have one doubt, it's the structure, which begins with Shuggie's present life and then jumps back to his earlier life. That approach undercuts the suspense somewhat, as it telegraphs part of the plot. Nonetheless, the ending is fantastic. Don't give up on the book.