Behold, the heart of Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart’s ’s achingly beautiful 2020 debut of the same name. Glasgow’s young Shuggie, who “wasn’t really one or the other”--Catholic or Protestant, boy or man, right or “no right”--is nonetheless fastidiously loyal to his alcoholic mammy. Twice-divorced Agnes Bain can initially hide the wreckage of “the drink.” Vibrant, well-spoken, and pretty, at first Agnes doesn’t show lines on her face, water in her eyes: “Every day with the makeup on...she climbed out of her grave and held her head high...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.”
Neighbors gossip and teachers fret, but really, “no one sees the flying woman.” Everyone leaves her: Agnes’ husbands and lovers, her daughter, her son. But Shuggie sees her. He’ll never leave. “I’d do anything for you,” he tells Agnes, when she trades buying him food for more of her drink.
After one too many lagers unravels Agnes’ life like the “toe to waist” run in her Pretty Pollys, though, Shuggie—having devoted his school days to buying her lager with food money, putting her to bed, and believing her promises to “give up the drink” and “get a job like other mammies”—wonders, “Why can’t I be enough?”
Every child of an alcoholic has asked herself that question. And if anything were ever enough to pull a parent from alcoholism, it would Shuggie—a selfless, earnest, honest, boy whose optimism is exceptionally buoyant. Shuggie is nothing if not wholly dedicated to Agnes’ happiness, her survival. But then, every child of an alcoholic knows that even the most perfect daughter or son is no cure for the urge to drink. Anyone who’s watched their parent stumble through the door, slur meaningless yet wicked insults, reach for another drink while their child goes hungry in belly and soul knows they aren’t as important as the next bottle or can, who takes off their parent’s shoes mid-day and tucks them into bed—these readers will weep.
And, at Shuggie’s side, like the coins he feeds and robs and feeds the electric meter, they’ll believe the promises to quit, hold out hope the AA will keep them clean, be the parent till the parent can gets back on his or her feet. The reader flinches at the blatant truths, and at the ‘skills’ with which Shuggie ‘survives’ ten years in the “new economy of the scheme”—the Eighties. Starved, neglected, abused, molested, and isolated, Shuggie wears his suffering on his jumper. But also, he knows Agnes doesn’t want to live like this.
Stylistically, the omniscient narrator uses heavy metaphor to put images into context young Shuggie can understand. Every “like” and “as” at once clarifies otherwise ungraspable, while distancing Shuggie from reality. From the opening line—“The day was flat,” throughout the central “limpet” theme, onto the conclusion, where, “like a tugboat,” Shuggie nudges his friend’s shoulder, metaphor gives Shuggie a lens through which he can understand his world. And it is his world. Time is measured by plastic ponies and little green men.
Stuart’s portrait—equally Shuggie’s and Agnes’—is imperfect. It’s sometimes rugged, always raw. But an exceptionally tight, polished tale wouldn’t make any sense. Readers who know the drink firsthand can relate. And those who are fortunate not to know the drink, they will forever see alcoholism differently. This is a story of empathy.
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Top reviews from other countries
jeannie
Disappointing portrayal
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 13, 2020
Brian G
A book of Glasgow cliches
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 9, 2021S MacKay
Poor Relative of Angela
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 22, 2021
