Shuggie Bain

I won't lie. Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart's debut novel, was incredibly raw and difficult to get through. The characters weren't particularly likeable, yet my heart ached for all them.

The story which takes place in 1980 Glasgow, Scotland is Shuggie, a young boy who is part of a working class family. At first Shuggie and his parents, Shug and Agnes, live with Agnes' parents in what sounds like a lower middle class apartment building. Shug moves the family away, out to the sticks, to a mining village where the mine has been closed for awhile and most of the miners are on the dole.

How do these people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse survive? Agnes finds solace in the bottle as do many of her neighbors. Drugs are rampant. Shuggie's older siblings find ways to leave the house as soon as they are old enough while Shuggie remains with Agnes, taking on the role of her keeper.  What an incredibly rough life. I felt like I held very little hope for the characters and wondered how they could have felt any hope for themselves.

Shuggie Bain reminded me of a cross between The Crazyladies of Pearl Street and The Glass Castle, two very other difficult books to read. I'm on the fence about whether I would recognize this one or not. If raw and rough are what you're in the mood for, this might be the perfect book.