I read Shuggie Bain with my local book club and our discussion the other evening was probably one of our best discussions yet. I’ve wanted to read this book ever since it was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize but I was uncertain whether I’d actually enjoy it or find it too much of a difficult read. So I’m glad that through the book club, I was able to finally sink my teeth into it.

Hugh ‘Shuggie’ Bain is a sweet child who spends his childhood being brought up on a run-down public housing estate in Glasgow, Scotland. Margaret Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes means to do well, to be a good mother, to have a house with its own front door but unfortunately, she increasingly finds solace in drink, and she drains away the little money they have on cans of extra-strong lager, which she then hides in handbags or pours into tea mugs. With no father, grandparents or older siblings around, Shuggie is left to take care of his mother on his own but as a young boy, he too has his struggles with becoming the ‘normal’ boy that he desperately longs to be. The story follows Agnes’ addiction journey and Shuggie’s heartbreaking reality of 20th century poverty.

Let me begin by saying that Shuggie Bain was just as bleak (if not more) than I thought it would be and comes with a lot of trigger warnings regarding alcoholism, drug use, addiction, neglect and abuse; to name a few!

I think the main thing that stood out to me was how so many of the characters were heartbreakingly let down in this novel. Agnes was let down by her parents, her second husband and the men around her. Shuggie was also let down by his parents and basically every adult around him, as were his brothers and sister who thankfully got out whilst they could. The whole community was let down by the Government, given just £38 a week to live on. With no job and no hope of having anything better, I’m not entirely surprised that alcohol and drugs were the only way for these people to get through every day. It's an unbelievably bleak reality, yet I guess what’s even more heartbreaking is that this narrative is very similar to the generation that lived through the late 1970s/1980s and even more shockingly, those communities that are living in poverty today.

As the reader, you spend chapter to chapter hoping and praying from the bottom of your heart that that things will turn out good; that Agnes won’t choose drink, that Shuggie will be able to go to school and not have to worry about coming home to a drunk mother but, in line with the theme of this book, you as a reader are let down too. There were actually moments in this book where I completely forgot how young Shuggie was, which is perhaps not only because of his educated way of speaking but also in part due to the fact that he needed to grow up so quickly because of what he had been privy to.

There are SO many topics of discussion you could have with this book which we as a book club fully took advantage of and I guess that is what makes this book so great. You can take each individual character, even the less prominent ones, and dissect their personality, discussing all the reasons why they did what they did. In the end, my heart broke for nearly every character in some way and left me with a lot of questions about how as a country, we allow public housing estates like the one Shuggie and his mother lived on, to just fester in a bleak world of poverty, crime and addiction.

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