“Whit’s yer name, wee man?”
“Hugh Bain,” he said in a shy voice. “Shuggie.”
“Is that a dolly ye’ve got, Shuggie?” The boy was using his name like he had known him a long while. Without waiting for an answer he added, “Are ye a wee girl?” He stepped into the long grass, flattening it as he came.
Shuggie shook his head again.
“If ye’re no’ a wee girl then ye must be a wee poof.” He tightened his smile. His voice was low and sweet like he was talking to a puppy. “Ye’re no a wee poof, are ye?”
Shuggie didn’t know what a poof was, but he knew it was bad. Catherine called Leek it when she wanted to hurt his feelings.
Set in and around Glasgow from 1981 to 1992, Shuggie Bain is the coming-of-age story of a sweet little boy with everything stacked against him: An abusive, womanising, mostly absent father; a proud but hopeless mother who finds relief in pull-ring cans of foamy lager; older siblings who are intent on escape; and with no food in the larder, a burdensome sense of responsibility for his Mammy’s welfare, and surrounded by the tough and wild children of unemployed coal miners, Hugh “Shuggie” Bain doesn’t understand why he is always centered out as “different” — but his tidy clothes, correct grammar, and swishy walk might have something to do with it. This could have been a terribly miserable read — beyond the hungry and neglected Bain children, there are many scenes of abuse and pain and despair — but little Shuggie never gives up on his mother, Agnes, and whether or not he can eventually save her from her demons and herself, the reader is constantly rooting for Shuggie; he is a pure ray of sunshine breaking through the gloomy Glaswegian smirr. Like Trainspotting, Shuggie Bain explores the devastating economic and social consequences of Margaret Thatcher’s domestic policies on the Scottish working class, and it is this social commentary, coupled with the intensely real relationship between wee Shuggie and his poor Mammy, that makes this a compelling and emotional read.
The pair drank in silence and watched the others go about their normal routines. Mr Darling kept his thick tweed coat on. The weight of him on the bed rolled Shuggie into his broad side. From the corner of his eye Shuggie watched the yellow tips of his thick fingers stab nervously at themselves. Shuggie had only taken a mouthful of the lager to be gracious, and as the man spoke to him, he could think only about the tinned ale, how sour and sad it tasted. It reminded him of things he would rather forget.
Shuggie Bain opens in the year 1992: When we first meet him, Shuggie is 17, living alone in a squalid bedsit, working at a supermarket, and dreaming of attending hairstyling college. After a very short introduction, the story rewinds to 1981, and seven-year-old Shuggie and his family are living in a highrise tenement with his mother’s parents. Things seem crowded and chaotic, but recognisable as a form of “normal family life”. The disjointedness between the timelines begs the question: how did wee Shuggie go from here to there? (It was to answer that question and to ensure that Shuggie never loses his shine that kept me glued to these pages with my heart in my throat.) The next chapter is set in 1982 and sees the Bain family relocated to Pithead — a cheap housing scheme in Glasgow’s suburbs, built for miners and their families, now filled with unemployed men and their disappointed wives; all drinking away their weekly welfare benefits as their children run wild:
The Glasgow to Edinburgh train seemed like a toy in the distance as it charged through the wasteland that separated the miners from the world. It created an unseen boundary, and it never ever stopped. Years ago the council had ripped out the only station, for big savings in stationmaster wages. They laid on a single bus that came three times a day and took an hour to get anywhere. Now, in the evenings, the eldest of the miners’ sons stood at the train tracks with beers and bags of glue and watched with sadness and spite the happy faces roar by every thirty minutes. They fondled their cousins’ tits under baggy Aran jumpers and ran across the tracks in front of the speeding train, their soft hair whipped by the near miss. They threw bottles of piss at the windows, and when the driver let fly his angry horn, they felt seen by the world, they felt alive.
It is in Pithead that Agnes’ flirtation with alcoholism becomes a full-on love affair, and it is her youngest child, Shuggie, who takes off her black, strappy heels and tummy-binding tights when she passes out at night; Shuggie who wipes the sick from his Mammy’s mouth in the morning and brings her cups of tea and water and the warm dregs of last night’s beer; Shuggie who skips school on welfare day to make sure Agnes has money enough to still the pain in her shaking bones. And you could almost despise Agnes for what she puts her children (and especially Shuggie) through if there weren’t scenes of her being handled roughly by men (and especially by her second husband, Big Shug) — there are no excuses for her neglect, but there is something by way of explanation. Throughout everything, Shuggie adores his beautiful and elegant mother and vows to stay by her side “until she gets better”.
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.
In the Acknowledgements, author Douglas Stuart indicates that this novel is autobiographical to some degree — and I think that that explains the things I liked best and least about Shuggie Bain. On the plus side, the storyline is completely believable and affecting and Stuart paints a perfect picture of 1980s Glasgow and its inhabitants; even the dialect seems genuine (to my ear anyway) without being a strain to decipher and the socioeconomic realities are shown, not told. On the other hand, there were quite a few scenes that made for interesting/disturbing vignettes but which didn’t add to the larger story — Lizzie’s confession in the hospital ward or Shuggie making a lone friend in Annie, but she is never mentioned again — and they left me wondering if these were events in the author’s life that felt singular enough to include for authenticity’s sake, but which couldn’t then be woven into a bigger picture. I hope I included enough variety in the quotes to give a sense of Stuart’s fine writing (for a debut novel by someone with a career in a different field, the writing is never amateurish), and while I was never distracted by clumsiness, I was never wowed by inventiveness either. I do want to stress once more: Shuggie and Agnes and their relationship was absolutely compelling and believable and I read, breathless and glassy-eyed, with a burning need to learn how it all would end. That journey was more than worth any of my small complaints.
The Man Booker 2020 Shortlist
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook
I've listed the titles in the order of my own enjoyment, and although my favourite from the longlist (Apeirogon by Colum McCann) didn't make the cut, I am not unhappy that Shuggie Bain won. This is the first time in years that I didn't try to read the longlist and I'm glad I didn't bother; what an uninspiring collection overall.
