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 ) |
