A weekend with Shuggie Bain

It’s fitting that I read Shuggie Bain like an addict. The world went on around me as I crouched down and supped on words, allowing myself to be slightly less fastidious about the care of the children. At around the three-quarters mark, the novel was complete in my mind. I was satiated, but grateful for the last quarter to allow me time to recover and digest.

Author Douglas Stuart has a keen eye for humanity and he has created one of the most memorable characters ever to grace the pages of a book — not Shuggie Bain, the boy whose life-story had me ready to volunteer at the local food bank and write to my local MP about giving free school meals to all children — but his mother, Agnes Bain, a complex, tortured soul reliant on drink. I picture her now in my mind walking down a bleak highway in her fur coat and high heels, head held high, her remaining inner and outer beauty a metaphor for what might have been. I doubt I will ever create a character as compelling as Agnes Bain. 

My childhood differed from Shuggie Bain’s, but much of the novel still resonated with me. Like Shuggie Bain, I was born in the mid-1970s when parts of Northern Ireland were as grim as parts of Glasgow, but I’ve never really taken the time to be angry about the social deprivation I saw in school, on the brae on the way home or at the wee park where the bonfire was lit each summer. We had good parks nearby, we could walk to the town centre, we had the seaside on our doorstep, we ran the streets. Yes, we lived in fear that our daddies might be shot or bombed, but there was always hot water and holidays to Butlins. When reading Shuggie Bain, I found myself experiencing real anger about Glasgow’s past, the dismantling of industry, the too-quick economic decline — the way people didn’t matter. Was Belfast dismantled more slowly or did we not notice because of the bombs?

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