A bittersweet debut

This powerful debut novel is a rare, wonderous thing. As a writer, it leaves me breathless in awe for the talent of the author; as a reader, it creates a level of excitement and anticipation for all his beautiful books to come.
Before I jump into the novel, a word of warning: this is not a beach read, nor one you’ll want to reach for if you’re feeling down, recovering from illness, or experiencing grief. This is a devastating yet tender, brutal yet delicate, depiction of life in working class Glasgow in the 1980s. It focuses on Hugh (Shuggy) Bain and his mother, Agnes, an alcoholic beauty, coarse yet proud, utterly damaged yet full of life, broken yet redeemed by love for her son, and the genuine heroism of her presentation to the world.

The novel opens in 1992 when we are introduced to Shuggy Bain, a 15-year-old living alone in a rundown bedsit while working at a deli counter and going to school “when he could afford to not be at the supermarket”. The loneliness of his meagre existence is vividly captured, leaving us to wonder how a young boy got to such a life.

Back to 1981 where we meet Agnes Bain leaning from a window in a high-rise apartment where she lives with her husband and three children “all crammed together in her mammys flat”.  Agnes is drinking, smoking, playing cards and betting the housekeeping money with friends, “their respite from ironing in front of the telly and heating tins of beans for ungrateful weans”. The evening degenerates until “Big Shug Bain” returns from driving his taxi and takes the other women home, returning hours later. Agnes knows what he has been doing because that’s how her own relationship with him began. Alone, she remembers an early holiday together in Blackpool, Shug dragging her up the stairs of a cheap B&B by her hair when she was too drunk to walk.

This is a story about poverty, addiction and abuse. Agnes descends through the degrading stages of alcoholism, ever more vulnerable to ever more predatory men, her only constant relationships with her children, whose knowledge of her disintegration is therefore intimate. The oldest, Catherine, marries in her late teens to get away from her mother and moves to South Africa. Alexander, “Leek”, a gifted artist who carries around with him a two-year-old letter offering him a university place, stays to try to teach Shuggie how to “act normal”: to appear to conform to the norms of working-class Glaswegian masculinity, which does not come naturally. He also stays in faltering hope of saving Agnes, until one day she throws him out, leaving young teenage Shuggie as her sole carer and witness.

Big Shug moves the family from the parent’s flat to the post-industrial wasteland of a former coal pit village, a vague and hopeless gesture towards removing Agnes from her suppliers and companions, but the landscape left by mine closures promote nothing but despair. Shuggie attends school in Pithead just enough to be bullied – not because of his mother’s drinking, which is common enough, but because he doesn’t move like a boy, doesn’t like football, can’t hide his fascination for hairdressing, dolls and My Little Ponies.

Shuggie and Leek learn to undress Agnes after a night out, to look away from her bruised thighs and gouged breasts, to catch vomit and wipe bile. This is a world with no vocabulary for sexual consent; men do what they do and women and boys like it or lump it. Agency flickers and goes out; Catherine gets away, while Leek stays away longer and longer. There’s heroism in Agnes’s commitment to self-presentation and domestic order, holding on to her lipstick and tights as her liver packs up, making sure the house is immaculate before the next abuser stops by; and something sadder than heroism in Shuggie’s passion for his disintegrating mother, which is not a choice but a fact. Children love their carers – that’s how abuse works.

Reading Shuggie Bain is a grim experience. There is a sense of heartbreak and inevitability as Agnes descends deeper and deeper. Even as Leek tries to tell Shuggie what will happen, Shuggie refuses to acknowledge it.
   “Shuggie she’s getting too old for this. It’s only a matter of time before it all catches up with her… What’s she gonnae do when you leave? What’s she gonnae do when the men stop wanting her?”
   “Then I won’t leave,” said Shuggie with certainty.

The novel closes where it started, in 1992, Shuggie living alone in his bedsit with ambitions of becoming a hairdresser. And despite everything, he has survived, he is still able to dress up in “poncey school shoes” and with his friend Leanne he can still dream of dancing. The novel ends as he “nodded, all gallus, and spun, just the once, on his polished heels”. A beautiful poignant final image.

Shuggie Bain comes from a deep understanding of the relationship between a child and a substance-abusing parent, showing a world rarely portrayed in literary fiction. It can be tough going, but the author’s compassion and care for his characters and Shuggie’s survival make this a beautiful, bittersweet novel.

Thanks to my pal, Loretta Huska at BookScout for this amazing recommendation.