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Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart

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Table of Contents

The book focuses on the lives of the main protagonist, a young boy named Shuggie Bain, and his mother Agnes Bain. His mother separated from her first husband and has been living with her parents for a while. They had two kids named Catherine and Leek.

The author jumps between the present and past to depict important events in Shuggies life. The story starts with Shuggie as a 16-year-old teenager who is living alone in Glasgow, Scotland in 1991. Shuggie lives a lowkey life, working at a grocery store and skipping school. He aspires to be a hairdresser but is uncertain if the profession could help him earn enough.

After Shuggies brief introduction, the author moves back in time to 1981 where Agnes is now married to her second husband, Big Shug. Shuggie is their biological son who lives with them along with his half-siblings, Catherine and Leek, at Agnes parents place in Sighthill.

Agnes and Shug are having a rough marriage wherein Shug is largely absent from the family as an important member. He drives a taxi for a living and has many extra-marital affairs. He isnt very secretive about them either which is a great shame for Agnes especially in front of her parents. She is also largely unhappy about her life at Sighthill that she mostly spends doing daily chores. She longs for some excitement in her life and dreads her future there. Her insecurities coupled with her rocky marriage lead her to turn to alcohol.

Agnes drinking problems worsen over time and she becomes self-destructive, and through it all, Shuggie never leaves her side. Shug tries to placate her by offering the family a place to relocate to. Agnes is relieved to leave Sighthill once and for all. However, when she reaches their new home in Pithead, she is left disappointed by the poverty-stricken area filled with dilapidated buildings. The coal mines in the area are shutting down thereby worsening the situation. Also, she receives another blow when Shug announces that he was abandoning her and his family to move in with a cab operator named Joanie Micklewhite that he had met at work.

While the family adjusts to the new city and life without Shug, Agnes spirals down into alcoholism again. Meanwhile, Shuggie is trying to come to terms with his own sexuality as he finds men attractive instead of women, an inclination frowned upon by their society. His effeminacy leads him to be bullied by the neighbors kids as well those studying at school with him. Thus, he struggles to motivate himself to attend school on a regular basis.

On the other hand, Shuggies half-sister wishes to escape their dire situation, so she marries Shugs nephew and permanently relocates to South Africa.

Meanwhile, Agnes alcohol addiction worsens and she begins sleeping with men just to be able to buy alcohol because shes almost always short of cash. A ray of hope comes in the form of a rehabilitation group called Alcoholics Anonymous where she begins attending group meetings. She also tries to start her life over by taking up a job as a petrol station attendant.

The meetings help her combat her addiction for a while. She then starts dating a cab driver named Eugene. He often drinks during their dinners and one time, he eventually manages to convince her to drink a glass of wine. This coaxing makes her fall back into her old habits and she begins drinking heavily again. Eugene is put off by this and leaves her. Agnes loses her job when she spirals further down into alcoholism to cope up with the trauma when she was sexually assaulted at a party. She tries to take her life several times over the years but somehow fails.

Her addiction strains her relationship with her children and she even kicks out her daughter Leek. Shuggie tries to empathize with his mother despite her behavior and addiction. He tries to be faithful to her and give her unwavering attention. Agnes repeatedly promises to quit drinking but cannot help herself and one day dies after inhaling her own saliva.

A few years later, Shuggie tries to help a friends alcoholic mother despite knowing that she may suffer the same fate as his own mother.

Shuggie Bain is written by debutant author Douglas Stuart. Stuart was born on 31 May 1976 in Glasgow, Scotland. He was raised in the small town of Sighthill.

Stuart had a troubled childhood similar to the main protagonist of his novel Shuggie Bain. He grew up in a dysfunctional family with two other siblings, him being the youngest. Stuarts father abandoned the family when the author was quite young. Hence, the responsibility of raising the children fell on the shoulders of his mother.

Stuart got his first writing job at the age of seven when he was tasked by his mother to ghostwrite for her autobiography. After his father left their family, his mother asked him to write her story in the form of a book. He recalls writing down the dedication of the book while his mother would dictate her story. They often sat amidst cans of beer, his mother drinking wholeheartedly. Funny thing is that despite all the preparations, they never wrote anything apart from the dedication. However, this incident served as a basis for the author to start crafting his own stories. Stuart fell in love with both reading and telling stories. It was his way of coping up, of trying to fit in the world by making it look like he was living in his own fictional realm.

As a child, Stuart was bullied a lot but he pretended that he was okay because his family was a complete mess and nobody was capable enough to understand and support him. Thus, he got into the habit of telling himself stories as a coping mechanism. Stuart wished to study English literature when he enrolled in college but he was asked to drop the subject and major in something else because boys from his background werent supposed to study literature.