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Shuggie Bain

The Million-Copy Bestseller & Winner of the Booker Prize

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Shuggie Bain

Written by: Douglas Stuart
Narrated by: Angus King
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About this listen

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE
WINNER OF 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' AND 'DEBUT OF THE YEAR' AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS
THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER

'An amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.' – The judges of the Booker Prize

'Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.' – The Observer

'Shuggie Bain means so much to me. It is such a powerfully written story . . . I love a heartbreak book but there is so much love within this one, particularly between Shuggie and his mother Agnes.' – Dua Lipa

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves.

It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. For readers of A Little Life and Angela's Ashes, it is a heartbreaking novel by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.

'A heartbreaking novel' – The Times

'Tender and unsentimental . . . The Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.' – Daily Mail

 Coming of Age Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Urban

Critic Reviews

A heartbreaking novel, a book both beautiful and brutal . . . All that grief and sadness and misery has been turned into something tough, tender and beautifully sad.
Leaves us gutted and marvelling: Life may be short, but it takes forever.
I think it’s the best first book I’ve read in many years. (Karl Ove Knausgård)
Rarely does a debut novel establish its world with such sure-footedness, and Stuart’s prose is lithe, lyrical and full of revelatory descriptive insights. (Alex Preston)
An astonishing portrait, drawn from life, of a society left to die . . . Shuggie Bain has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. In a just world, it would win.
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 . . . Admirable and important. (Sarah Moss)
This is a dysfunctional love story . . . between a boy and his mother . . . what makes his book a worthy contender for the Booker is his portrayal of their bond, together with all its perpetual damage.
Douglas Stuart’s startling Glasgow-set debut novel creates a world of poverty and suffering offset by pure, heart-filling, love . . . It’s a novel that deserves, and will surely often get, a second reading. (Allan Massie)
Shuggie Bain is a novel that aims for the heart and finds it. (John Self)
Tender and unsentimental . . . and the Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.
Beautiful and bleak but with enough warmth and optimism to carry the reader through. (Graham Norton (via Twitter))
A boy's heartbreaking love for his mother . . . as intense and excruciating to read as any novel I have ever held in my hand . . . The book’s evocative power arises out of the author’s talent for conjuring a place, a time, and the texture of emotion . . . brilliantly written.
An outstanding book . . . Magnificently done . . . Wonderful. (Lee Child)
A debut novel that reads like a masterpiece, Shuggie Bain gives voice to the kind of helpless, hopeless love that children can feel toward broken parents.
This heartfelt and harrowing debut novel – which has been compared to the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, and which Kirkus has already called “a masterpiece” . . . is rightly being heralded for its visceral, emotionally nuanced portrayal of working class Scottish life and its blazingly intimate exploration of a mother-son relationship.
A formidable story, lyrically told, about intimacy, family, and love. (12 Best Books of 2020 So Far)
All stars
Most relevant
The story was great but the narrator's accent makes it very difficult to make sense of a lot of words.But the story make the extra effort worthwhile.

Great story but poor narration

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The Glaswegian accent, especially in dialogues, is presumably realistic but is difficult for a non- native to understand.

Narrator

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I picked up this book as it had won the Booker Prize 2020. As it happens, the Booker Prize winning entries are often too sad to enjoy. The last Booker Price winning entry I had read was 'God of Small Things' by Arundhati Roy - another family story interwoven with grief.

This book captures the entire journey of the young boy Shuggie Bain from his age of 5 till he turns 15. The story travels through his interactions with society against the backdrop of his mother's struggle with drinks and men. The relationship between siblings - Leek and Shuggie, men and women - Shug/ Eugene and Agnus, as well as parents and kids - Agnes and her parents across multiple generations and times have been portrayed pretty realistically in this novel. But the highlight is Shuggie's relationship with his mom and his natural hope around her alcoholism. How can one give up hope when that is the only support one has in their life.

The author has penned down the emotions and characters with impeccable precision. Really makes you feel their hopelessness, small joys, big sorrows and the struggle to make it all work. Although a bit long, worth a read. The narrator on Audible has used multiple variations to depict different characters - a few of them aren't very legible, but otherwise a decent experience.

A long narrative of a sad childhood

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