Review: Shuggie Bains

I read Shuggie Bains when it was on the Booker shortlist. I read it very quickly, and then I put it away. Since then I have thought about it from time to time. It’s taken a little while to be ready to write about it.

Shuggie Bains is a big purple bruise of a novel. It is set in 1980’s Scotland, and it tells the story of Shuggie’s childhood, spent in poverty with an alcoholic mother and motley assortment of family and neighbours, until he’s old enough to live alone – although that’s still far too young.

The characters are well drawn and the voice of the novel is assured. Stewart has a great eye for detail and a nice turn of phrase. It’s very evocative – I know this world well and he portrays it accurately.

I’m not a gay Scottish man, but I did grow up in the 1980’s on a housing estate in Birmingham. I was the only child of a widowed father. He was made redundant from the Smethwick steelworks, like lots of others back then. My Dad was a gambling man (not a winning one), and what money we had was spent in the bookies or the pub. I left home when I was 16. I relate to this book.

Ah, but I see I have told you only half a story. I haven’t mentioned my Dad’s mother died when he was young or that he had bladder cancer and nearly died himself a year after my mum did. In the space of three years he went from being an employed man with a family and a mortgage, to a man with a urostomy pouch, living in a council maisonette with a teenage daughter who hated him.

Douglas Stuart tells you the whole story. Shuggie is badly let down by everyone, one way or another, but there aren’t any villains. Just when you decide his father is a bad man, you get to see another side of him. Just when the mother has definitely crossed the line, you get her point of view. Shuggie is a bit of a prig, he’s not the pure hero. Even the most stable couple, his Granny and Grandad, turn out to be flawed (in a chapter that left me breathless).

Shuggie Bains shows you the ugliness. You prod, it hurts. But there’s tenderness there too, a terrible beauty, and the promise of healing. It’s not as simple as love conquers all because Shuggie can’t save his Mum and, later, his friend Leanne can’t save hers either. But they carry on trying and it is this ridiculous, heart breaking generosity of spirit that stayed with me long after the scenes of misery faded.

They’ll be alright, you sense. Life goes on.

Further reading

If you enjoyed Shuggie Bain, you will likely enjoy Once in a house on fire. It’s marketed as non-fiction, but written like a novel. I think Roddy Doyle captures the flavour of difficult working class lives too – The Woman who Walked into Doors, for example. There’s plenty of Tragic Childhoods out there, once you start looking.