Post by wyres on Jan 31, 2022 19:27:37 GMT
From Goodreads
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.
Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.
Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.
My thoughts
This book should come with a warning as it does contain passages that may be very upsetting to others due to the sexual nature of them. I would say that this is not the book to read if you are easily offended.
My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this book. This book made it on to the Booker Prize shortlist in 2020 and was voted the winner. It has won other book awards too and was voted Debut Novel of the Year and Book of the Year for 2021 by the British Book Awards. I am not always drawn to books that are award winners as they can often be quite pretentious in nature, this was nothing like that at all in my opinion.
Set in Glasgow in the early 1980's, at a time when times were hard for many (not that times aren't hard now or haven't been at other times), this is a gritty story about Hugh Bain known to all as 'Shuggie' and the people that he knows. Shuggie tries his hardest to fit in, but it's not the easiest of tasks for him. He is a troubled child, that suffers at the hands of abusers and bullies. His mother is an alcoholic with dubious morals, trying to make a living for her and her family. This is quite a dark read that portrays the darker side of our society. The story draws you in and you feel for Shuggie and his siblings (they seem to take a minor part in the story), he won't be the only child that's been brought up in similar circumstances and he certainly won't be the last sadly.
I quite enjoyed this story and found it a well written debut novel that took me back to my teens and the way things were for many back then. The Tories were in power and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she ruled the Country with a determination not seen in some Politicians before. Many didn't approve of what the Tories were doing and their popularity in the polls and with the public took a huge dip. It was the era of striking in many different areas and power cuts were the norm. Unemployment was high and trying to make ends meet wasn't easy at all. Times were hard for many of us (speaking from some experience) and money wasn't in great supply.
It's not often that you see your name appear in books, when it's not a very common one. I was quite pleased to see my name appear in this one. Shuggie's Mum has a 'friend' called Mr McNamara, in one passage in the book he is making her a picnic and has snuck the food into his house.
'He would tell her some other time how that morning he had made the thick sandwiches on a cutting board that he had taken into the locked bathroom. He would tell her about his daughter Bernie and her prying ways, but later, much later. It could all wait, he didn't want to spoil the lovely day.'
This debut novel would make a great reading group read. There is so much that can be discussed. Why not grab a copy and see what you think of it for yourself.
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.
Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.
Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.
My thoughts
This book should come with a warning as it does contain passages that may be very upsetting to others due to the sexual nature of them. I would say that this is not the book to read if you are easily offended.
My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this book. This book made it on to the Booker Prize shortlist in 2020 and was voted the winner. It has won other book awards too and was voted Debut Novel of the Year and Book of the Year for 2021 by the British Book Awards. I am not always drawn to books that are award winners as they can often be quite pretentious in nature, this was nothing like that at all in my opinion.
Set in Glasgow in the early 1980's, at a time when times were hard for many (not that times aren't hard now or haven't been at other times), this is a gritty story about Hugh Bain known to all as 'Shuggie' and the people that he knows. Shuggie tries his hardest to fit in, but it's not the easiest of tasks for him. He is a troubled child, that suffers at the hands of abusers and bullies. His mother is an alcoholic with dubious morals, trying to make a living for her and her family. This is quite a dark read that portrays the darker side of our society. The story draws you in and you feel for Shuggie and his siblings (they seem to take a minor part in the story), he won't be the only child that's been brought up in similar circumstances and he certainly won't be the last sadly.
I quite enjoyed this story and found it a well written debut novel that took me back to my teens and the way things were for many back then. The Tories were in power and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she ruled the Country with a determination not seen in some Politicians before. Many didn't approve of what the Tories were doing and their popularity in the polls and with the public took a huge dip. It was the era of striking in many different areas and power cuts were the norm. Unemployment was high and trying to make ends meet wasn't easy at all. Times were hard for many of us (speaking from some experience) and money wasn't in great supply.
It's not often that you see your name appear in books, when it's not a very common one. I was quite pleased to see my name appear in this one. Shuggie's Mum has a 'friend' called Mr McNamara, in one passage in the book he is making her a picnic and has snuck the food into his house.
'He would tell her some other time how that morning he had made the thick sandwiches on a cutting board that he had taken into the locked bathroom. He would tell her about his daughter Bernie and her prying ways, but later, much later. It could all wait, he didn't want to spoil the lovely day.'
This debut novel would make a great reading group read. There is so much that can be discussed. Why not grab a copy and see what you think of it for yourself.