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152901929X

Shuggie Bain.

Author: Stuart, Douglas.

Publication year: 2021

Language: English

Media class: Paperback

Publisher: London : Picador, 2021.

ISBN: 9781529019292 (pbk.) : 8.99

Notes:

Originally published: New York: Grove Press, 2020.

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

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400 pages.

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Reviews

I've been living with Shuggie and his little family over many years in various places in Glasgow. Now I'm away from his fictional life all I want to do is talk about it. I think about them in the morning and before I go to sleep. Shuggie Bain is raw, brutal yet beautiful and illustrates how childhood can shape or break us. It brought to mind Rohinton Mistri's, A Fine Balance, in that it takes you on a journey between hope and despair. I loved the characters, the writing, and the empathy and honesty of Douglas Stuart.

29/03/22

Tracy Hager

Wiltshire

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