It took me an unusually long time to get through this book because I found it very painful to read. The description of the lives of Agnes, the alcoholic mother, and her three children was so specific and felt so real that I kept hoping that it wasn’t autobiographical. Then I got to the acknowledgements, and my fears were confirmed. Children should not have to contend with the mood swings or states of drunkenness of their parents. And they shouldn’t have to become the parents in the family.

Shuggie, the youngest child, was left behind as his philandering father left and his older siblings managed to escape from the chaos surrounding Agnes. Shuggie was also a boy who didn’t quite fit in with his schoolmates. At least he did learn resilience from his mother. ”Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she has 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.”

This book contains multiple rapes, child molestation and men who are too horrible to be allowed to live. When you get to the sentence “What baby?” you’ll know why I wanted them all to die a painful death in a filthy ditch.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This is a heart-breaker. Have your tissues ready. What a great story that rings true with tone, characters, and overall plot.

Shuggie Bain is a story about a family devastated by the effects of poverty, abuse, alcoholism, and other devastating realities that came along with the Thatcher policies enacted in Glasgow in the 1980s.

This was a hard book to get through; it’s subject matter often so grim and shattering that I had to step away for awhile because of how effectively it was portrayed. Well done, Stuart ! Did I mention this is the author’s debut novel? Again, I say, well done!

You follow the Bain family from the time that Shuggie is a young child, all the way to his teen years. Seeing the struggles as well as the brief hints of light that shine on them all, but particularly Shuggie and his mother, Agnes. Between the relationships Agnes has with the men in her life (most of which are far less than healthy) and the all too accurate portrayal of what it’s like to be the child of an alcoholic parent (is the parent the parent, or is the child the parent? Unhealthy bonds and no safe place to call home), it hits hard. This is very much a family and individual character centered story, so if that is your cup of tea then you may want to pick this one up!
I’m not sure what more to say other than that this book really touched on the right places. The writing was real and it was not hard to fall deep into the world, the very true to life world that existed then and in some areas still exists today.

Whilst I do believe this book is going on my “favorites of 2020” list, a few other things should be mentioned:
-The dialect may take awhile to adjust to if you’re not already familiar.
-Content warnings should be given for rape, physical abuse, mental abuse, substance abuse, and gambling.
-Lastly, I would reiterate that this is a dark book and from personal experience would avoid reading it if you are not in a good place mentally.

I was given a copy of this title from Grove Atlantic via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

The writing here is simply gorgeous. The scenes and characters carefully and sympathetically drawn. But, the novel is dark and the lack of plot to drive it forward makes an already long novel, even longer.

Wonderful read. Fantastic debut. I knew I would love this from the title and the cover photograph. It was as good as I thought it might be. Sad but not depressing it was ultimately uplifting. I was lucky enough to get a review copy from #Netgalley; also I listened to part of it on audio and the narrators Scottish accent added to it. My grandparents and mum were/are Scottish and I lived for a few years in Glasgow so it was easy to picture the closes and schemes. Details like the Kensitas cigarettes brought the story vividly to life.
I didn’t find it hard to read/listen to as some readers, and only a few times did I feel uncomfortable due to the subject matter (alcoholism). Mostly the story was carried by the strong characterisation and I enjoyed that we did not just have Shuggies viewpoint but the whole family’s.
I believe this book will take the author far and that it will become popular. Detail throughout was beautiful. Talented author. As a postscript I liked the plug for Alateen as some people may not know about it. Thoroughly enjoyed the hours spent with this book. This review appears on Amazon and Waterstones.

Shuggie Bain is one of those novels where, for me, the form let down the content. This is a story about alcoholism, abuse, and poverty, and it is unremitting in its depiction of those things. For all its heavy subject matter, though, it left me largely impassive. It felt like the more the narrative wanted me to feel, the less I actually felt.

The crux of my problem with this novel is its form--that is, its narrative structure and writing style. The writing in Shuggie Bain falls under the weight of its story, not necessarily on a sentence-by-sentence basis, but on a more holistic level.

The narrative, here, suffers from a kind of stasis: it's repetitive, lacking dynamism in both character and plot. Over and over again we see Agnes, the main character in Shuggie Bain aside from Shuggie himself, engage in the same cycle of abuse: she drinks, she gets herself into increasingly precarious situations, she tries to quit drinking, she is seemingly on the mend, and then she relapses. Of course, I can recognize that this kind of cycle exists for many of those who have struggled with substance abuse; I never expected Agnes to get over years of substance abuse after a single attempt to quit drinking. My issue is that narratively, it didn't make for very engaging reading. It's one thing to be reading about the same plot point happening over and over again; it's another thing to have that plot point be about substance abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. The end result was that not only did I start to get impatient with the novel, but I also just started to feel increasingly distanced from and indifferent to its story.

More than that, though, I felt like I never got to know the characters beyond their suffering. There were a few scenes here and there that had genuinely earnest and caring character interactions, but beyond that it was just more of the same: characters either inflicting or being subjected to abuse.

To put it simply, Shuggie Bain largely prioritized the situational over the psychological: the overwhelming need to buy alcohol when you're already extremely financially straitened, the binge drinking and subsequent blackouts, the vulnerability that comes with being a child of an alcoholic mother. What I wanted from Shuggie Bain was to emphasize the psychological alongside the situational, to give me a closer look into the thoughts and emotions of its characters, to make me feel like I knew them and not just the things they did or the things that happened to them.

I want to tread carefully here because I don't want my criticism of this book to be "it was too depressing." Depressing things happen in the world; it feels like a bit of a disservice to call experiences that many people have gone through "too depressing," especially for a novel like this where, I believe, at least some of the story is autobiographical. My problem is not that it was a depressing story, but that it wasn't a particularly well told one.

I know I've been talking about the form and content of a novel as if they're two separate things, but really when it comes down to it, they're inextricable. The content doesn't exist without the form. When a story isn't told well, it doesn't matter how good or bad it is; the end result is just a poorly told story.

It took me a long time to read this book, because it was so heart-wrenchingly sad. The gorgeous writing made Shuggie's life so clearly described, that I wished I could find a way to help this little boy through the difficulties that he had to endure.
What makes this even more heart breaking is that you know how so many little ones have to go, or are going through their childhoods just as Shuggie is doing. With the opiate crisis our country is facing as well as parents' addictions to alcohol and other drugs, there are so many children living in the same way.
I highly recommend reading this one.

Agnes Bain may be the most memorable drunk in literature. Living in Glasgow Scotland during the 1980’s, she leaves her first husband who seems to be a solid, respectable person with whom she had two children. She leaves him for a philandering taxi driver whose activities aren’t that much different than hers. With Shug Bain she has a third child, Shuggie. Shug moves the family from his mother-in-law’s apartment to god-forsaken council housing in an area where Maggie Thatcher has been closing the coal mines. Shug leaves Agnes and the three kids there and returns to Glasgow where he shacks up with his mistress. You really can’t blame him, Agnes is soused most of the time. The two older kids are nearly adult and manage to make their way forward, but poor little Shuggie, is stuck with his mom, the mean kids in the council housing who instantly pick up on his feminine ways and pick on him continually. Worth reading, this is one of the saddest books I’ve read in a long time. Glasgow has lost its appeal after reading about their slums. This is not a book that makes you want to visit. If you want a cheerful middle-class book about Scotland read something by Alexander McCall Smith, although it seems like the residents around 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh aren’t that impressed by Glasgow either.

4.5 I knew it! When I was only fifty pages or so into the book, I had the feeling it was going to break my heart. It did. Glasgow in the eighties, many live in council housing, a day to day existence. These people are so messed up, poor and struggling, trying to find money, love, desperate beyond belief. Agnes turns to drink, anything to escape the mess she has made of her life. Her three children, try their best, but it is never enough. One leaves home as soon as she can, leaving her mother and two brothers far behind.

It is Shuggie though who breaks my heart and to s certain extent his older brother Leek. They both have responsibilities they should not have at their age. Shuggie though has an additional struggle, as he doesn't fit in anywhere. His sexual orientation makes him stand out, he walks different, doesn't like sports. Ultimately he is picked on and bullied. He also feels if his mother just realized how much he love her, she would stop drinking.

This story feels do very real. Children that grow up in households where ones parent is an alcoholic, will recognize the authenticity of the way the children act. How they often blame themselves, take on responsibilities way too early. Believe me I know. I think that is why this book hit me so hard.

A terrific book, full of emotion and the struggles of a parent who can't face reality. A parent who struggles with a fearsome addiction. Yet, reading this one can't help but feel for her too.

ARC from Netgalley.

This is a very sad and stark story, but uplifting in the love Shuggie has for his mother. I loved the descriptive writing as well as the dialect.

I think my heart grew three sizes reading this.

Shuggie Bain is a young boy growing up in 80s Glasgow, with an alcoholic mother, absent father, and a dawning sense that he just doesn’t fit the same mould as all the other kids. It is a stark, evocative novel that presents both its setting and its characters with deep empathy.

We follow Shuggie from ages six to seventeen, but it is not much of a childhood as he spends most of it looking after his mother. Really, this novel is her tragic story and could just as easily have been titled Agnes Bain. She is both cause and effect of the wreckage of Shuggie’s life, coloured as it is by poverty and violence. She fails him and is failed by others. Meanwhile Shuggie struggles with the standards of masculinity required of him by his peers, and the hopelessness pervading a community put out of work and with nowhere to go. Your heart breaks for Shuggie, Agnes, and everyone else in this forlorn place.

It’s hard to explain why a 450-page novel that is so bleak and devastating is worth your time. Not everyone likes sad stories, and even those who do need to be in right mood for something like this. Shuggie Bain is immersive, authentic, extremely moving, and a remarkable debut. 4.5 stars.

This was heartbreaking. A very good book though, I was stuck on each and every word and found it hard to put down a few times. It follows the point of view of the baby of this family, his name is Shuggie. There are 3 children, the 2 older ones are from one man, the man the mother leaves for another, and this other man is Shuggie's father. He isn't a good man, he brings the family to live in the ghetto before he ultimately leaves; all the while the mother is falling deeper and deeper into alcoholism. Despite Shug being the baby, he usually ends up in the parenting role, doing everything he can to take care of his mother while she drinks herself stupid.

Thanks netgalley for giving me the advanced PDF so that I can share my opinions with y'all

This book is billed as a coming-of-age story but be warned...

Shuggie Bain is NOT a John Green book.

This is a graphic, gritty, unflinching coming-of-age story about the life of a precious child struggling for air under an avalanche of tribulations and his alcoholic mother of whom his love knows no bounds.

It takes a few chapters to settle into Shuggie's world but I implore you to stick it out.

Douglas Stuart's writing is exemplary in creating an immersive experience unlike any I've experienced in a long time. Bravo, sir.


** I recieved an ARC from Grove Atlantic in exchange for an honest review. **

I found the beginning of this book to be a bit difficult, because it's written in a strong (scottish? Irish?) dialect.

This book was written about the Thatcher era, which was similar to the Great Depression, in the United Kingdom. (Google it, it was a very sad era). People are poor and struggling, and as a result they turn to drink, drugs, gambling, prostitution etc.

In this book we follow the story of Shuggie Bain the son of Agnes Bain. After a rocky marriage, Agnes turns to drink and becomes an alcoholic. Her two older children manage to leabe the nest to fend for themselves, but Shuggie is left behind in the aftermath to take care of his ailing mother.

This book is very dark and depressing. There are few character you will like, but there are a lot you will feel sorry for. There is no happy ended and there are a lot of triggering events. Please do not read this unless you are in the right frame of mind.

Shuggie makes his way into your heart and he is a character you most likely won't ever forget.

Content Warning: rape, prostitution, child abuse, alcohol, drugs, sexual abuse, sexuality abuse, homophobia

*thanks to Netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review*

Set in the 80s in Glasgow, Shuggie Bain is a depressingly sad story of a little boy Hugh 'Shuggie' living in a social housing with his gorgeous but alcoholic mother Agnes. Shuggie is different from other boys and doesn't like the usual 'boy stuff' and so he's constantly bullied and picked on. He loves his mummy dearly and wants to protect her from men who use her and don't care about her. Agnes takes pride in her appearance but that's not enough to keep her husband Shug to stay with her. Her drinking problem is out of control and all her benefits money is spent on alcohol.

Shuggie Bain is a story of addiction, poverty and abuse. It is an honest and gloomy account of life in Scotland when unemployment rocketed due to Thatcher's reforms and thousands of men found themselves out of work unable to provide for their families. This is a hard book to read and It took me a while to finish it, not because it's not a great story, but due to the heaviness and bleakness which can be draining. Yet, it is very readable and compelling and I'm sure we'll be hearing about this book and the author quite a bit.

Many thanks to the publisher for my review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Agnes had so many hopes for her life. Her first husband was simply a disappointment, too well-behaved, too boring. With Shug Bain things could be different. But soon she wakes up still in her childhood room with her parents, aged 39 and mother of three kids. Shug promises a better life and rents them a home in a run-down public housing area on the outskirts of Glasgow. Yet, Shug does not really move in with his family, he is driving his taxi more and more often and spends his free time with other women. Soon enough, Agnes finds comfort in alcohol, her new neighbourhood is the perfect place to drown your thoughts and worries in cans of beer. Shuggie’s older brother Leek and his sister Catherine can distance themselves from their always intoxicated mother, yet, Shuggie is too young and for years, he hopes that one days, Agnes will be sober and they will have a life like any normal family.

Douglas Stuart’s novel is really heart-wrenching. You follow Shuggie’s childhood in the 1980s, a time when life was hard for many working class families who often did not know how to make ends meet which drove many fathers and mothers to alcohol. Shuggie’s love for his mother is unconditional, he is too young to understand the mechanisms behind her addiction and to see what it does not only to her but also to him. It would be too easy to blame Agnes for the misery she brings to herself and her son, she too is a victim of the time she lives in and the society that surrounds her. Industrial times are over in Scotland and the formerly working class turn into a new underclass.

It is not the plot that stands out in this novel, actually, all that happens is a downward spiral of alcoholism and decay that leads to the necessary end one would expect. Much more interesting are the two main characters, mother and son, and their development throughout the novel. Agnes tries to preserve her pride, to be the glamorous and beautiful woman she has once been and who has always attracted men even when times get tough. She keeps her chin up as long as she can – at least when she happens to be sober.

Already at a young age Shuggie has to learn that life will not offer him much. His family’s poverty and his mother’s addiction would be enough challenge in life. However, the older he gets, the more unsure he becomes about who he actually is. As a young boy, he prefers playing with girls’ toys and later he does not really develop an interest in girls either which makes him an easy target of bullying. No matter how deep his mother sinks, he always hopes for better days, days with his father, days without hunger. He is good at observing and even better at doing what is expected of him. He learns quickly how to behave around the different men in their home, how to hide his life from the outside world. In Leanne, he finally finds somebody who can understand him because she herself leads exactly the same life. They only long to be normal, yet, a normal life is not something that their childhood has been destined to.

Quite often you forget how young Shuggie is, his life is miserable but he has perfectly adapted to the circumstances. Douglas Stuart provides insight in a highly dysfunctional family where you can nevertheless find love and affection. It is clear that there is no escape from this life which makes it totally depressing. Somehow, the novel reminds me of the “Kitchen Sink” dramas with the only difference of being set in the 1980s and shown from a female perspective. Agnes is not the angry young woman; she is the desperate middle-aged mother whose dreams are over and who provides only one example to her son: do not expect anything from life or anybody.

An emotionally challenging novel due to its unforgiving realism.

Thank you, Grove Atlantic Press for gifting me a DARC of Shuggie Bain
by Douglas Stuart, in exchange for an honest review. If I could describe this book in 3 words I would say, devastating, maddening and remarkable. I had to read this book in parts because I found myself extremely sensitive towards Shuggie’s struggles. Stuart is an excellent storyteller and I would read more of his future works.

Excellent debut novel and beautifully written.
This is however a very dark read about alcoholism, drug abuse, graphic rape, abuse and raw poverty in Thatcher-era Glasgow with descriptive scenes of poverty and desolation.
Agnes, Shuggie’s mother, whose once positive dreams are constantly shattered by her selfish abusive philandering second husband Shug, Shuggie’s father. Her downward spiral into alcoholism makes her continually fail her children and yet, this young boy clearly loves his mother.
A heart wrenching story and a tough but a must read.

What a book! This is not one I will soon forget. It really is hard to believe this is a debut novel. It is beautifully written and so descriptive that I could picture everything clearly in my mind. It is a heartbreaking story of a family that is dysfunctional in so many ways. The children have an alcoholic mother and an absentee father and most of the money that comes into the house goes for alcohol instead of food and other necessities. The main character is the youngest son of three children and loves his mother dearly and does everything he can to help and protect her. His two older siblings eventually move away and leave Shuggie alone to cope with his mother. He is a teenager at the time and is dealing with being bullied and his own sexuality. This really is a hard story to read but one that is truly worth the effort. I highly recommend this book. It is definitely five stars for me.

"Shuggie flicked the brittle heads of the bulrush reeds and wondered whether the sadness would get her today. The frozen reeds were bone dry, and when he tapped the heads their seeds took to the air like little parachutists. They floated up and back to the scheme like a parade of little ghosts. he made a game of telling the ghosts that he loved her, and with a flick he sent them her way."

In fact, Shuggie's every waking moment is consumed with schemes to lift his mother, Agnes Bain, up and away, to rise above her crippling alcoholism and to maintain the brave face she paints on with such pride, for longer than it takes her to find, or win, or wrestle or earn the funds for her next 'noose of Special Brew'. Despite her inept (and, too often, down-right neglectful) mothering, Shuggie- abandoned by first his father and then his sister and brother- loves Agnes with every ounce of his existence

This is a heartbreakingly sad account of of what happens when people who cannot care for themselves, have children. Set in the 80’s and 90’s in the working class, poverty-stricken tenements of Glasgow, Douglas Stuart paints a bleak picture. At once, I wanted to look away and for Shuggie's ordeal to end, whilst at the same time I was unable to put the book down. There is very little light amongst the shade, but there is a whole lot of love and loyalty and so many far-reaching moments upon which, I am certain, I will find myself reflecting for some time.

My thanks to netgalley and the author for sharing an advanced copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.