Maddison

Plenty of literary fiction has centered on younger voices but there was always something that captured my attention with the way such a perspective was used in Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain– a decision that turns what could be such an easily pessimistic and gloomy novel into something very different. 

Spanning over (roughly) a decade, the novel follows Shuggie, a young Glaswegian boy, from his very earliest years into teenagehood. Fighting the effects of Thatcher’s administration that saw to the destruction of communities with mass unemployment, Shuggie’s home city becomes rife with poverty and addiction and, having expressed his interest in the damage this did to the domestic sphere, Stuart centers his novel in the home– focusing on our mother-and-son duo, Shuggie and Agnes. While we meet Shuggie’s two older siblings, it is clear that they do not bear the same relationship with Agnes as Shuggie does and they disappear from the home long before Shuggie himself is able to. Consequently, Shuggie comes to bear the brunt of Agnes’ alcoholism, finding himself responsible for his mother’s (as well as his own) wellbeing from an incredibly young age. 

The shame of his mother’s addiction isolates them both from their surrounding community and this is only made worse by the mocking Shuggie faces over his sexuality– a sexuality that he himself does not yet understand. The dedication of Stuart’s next book, “for the gentle sons of Glasgow” seems equally as fitting for his debut in this way. Backed further into his home life then, with Agnes the only one who appears to love him unconditionally (encouraging him to dance, for example, despite the mocking he faces for being effeminate), his love for his mother becomes a key tether throughout the novel. Despite all the harm she inflicts on him, Shuggie protects her. 

A violent system breeds interpersonal violence, building a complicated network that Stuart does not shy away from exploring. We might grow angry with Agnes for Shuggie’s menial schooling but we love her for who she tells Shuggie he can be. We sympathise with Agnes’ addiction when Stuart exposes her own point of view, seeing just how much she struggles against it, seeing additionally the kind of violence she uses drink to cope with. But we also weigh this against young Shuggie– a young boy forced to take on responsibilities well beyond his years, alone in a home that strips him of dreaming outside of it. A boy keeping money back so that they can both eat. Stuart doesn’t ask us to choose between them. Instead, he lets us look at the widespread violence at play, how it proves to be inter-generational and inescapable when the system is not built for kindness. 

But the love that permeates the novel grounds us in something deeper, some solid sense that community is possible and rebuildable. Ultimately, love does prevail in this seemingly pessimistic novel. Not a love that is wholly healing and blunt but a love that is shaped and sharpened by the violent system of the Thatcher years. Love in Shuggie Bain might not fix, but it certainly does permeate. Stuart deftly merges Shuggie’s youthful mind with his more adultified experiences, asserting this “gentle son of Glasgow” as one that might not escape his ‘bad’ conditions, but one that will love through it anyway. Shuggie Bain is not an escape of working class life, nor is it a shameful look back on it; Shuggie Bain is a celebration of a love that can be found even under the darkest of conditions.