Books
by Douglas Stuart
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Shuggie Bain |
Rejoice! The Booker judges really have chosen a title that is not just a literary triumph but is absolutely un-put-downable. I'm only half way through but couldn't resist having my say!
(Jenny Baker - bwl 99 Winter 2021) |
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Shuggie Bain |
Shuggie is growing up on a run-down estate in Glasgow where unemployment is rife. His beloved, unmarried mother is an alcoholic and always falls for disastrous men. Shuggie knows he must look after and protect her but also he struggles to define himself. He is different, people notice, he must learn to be more like a boy. This is a raw, heartbreaking novel about a little boy's love for his mother and the devastating effect that addiction has on all those around you. Carrying the ghost of his mother somehow 16 year-old Shuggie must survive. It was a page-turner right to the end.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 101 Summer 2021) |
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Young Mungo |
I was a huge admirer of Stuart's debut novel Shuggie Bain so why am I finding his latest so hard to read? Is it because it is about yet another 16-year old boy with an alcoholic mother growing up in a seventies Glasgow tenement awash with rival gangs of Catholics and Protestants? This time there's a bullying older brother, a saint-like sister, a love affaire with another boy, male rape and murder. So it is different but . . . . . .
(Jenny Baker - bwl 111 Winter 2017) |
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