Shuggie Bain - Book Review

Shuggie Bain - Book Review

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Posted 2021-05-12 by Mayfollow
[i]Shuggie Bain,[/i] the debut novel by Douglas Stuart, won the 2020 Booker Prize. The only time I had cause to smile over this novel was when another reader described it as "misery porn", a term I'd not heard before. According to Wikipedia " Misery lit is a genre of supposedly biographical literature mostly concerned with the protagonist's triumph over personal trauma or abuse, often during childhood. It is also sometimes called pathography or misery porn."

1980's Glasgow and the men are out of work and the women are finding solace in their addictions: gambling, drink, and valium, and often all at once.


Shuggie is the youngest of three children. His father is a philandering and abusive slug who relocates the family away from the support of relatives to a town where the pits are closed and poverty abounds and then does a runner leaving the kids under the total control of their alcoholic mother. The two older children make their escape though loving, effeminate Shuggie does his best to protect his mother, even going without food for days because the dole money went on the drink. You just know it's not going to end well ...

Bleak it may well be though because it is so well written, and because we keep hoping for a "happy ever after", we keep reading until the finish line.

After completing Shuggie Bain, I was unable to open a bottle of wine for three days. Not one little glimmer of hope within the entire book.

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    84209 - 2023-06-11 06:51:28

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