Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is a heart-wrenching tale of childhood in Scotland in the 1980’s amongst addiction, poverty and sexuality. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.” McCourt reminded us that “. Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. We can do better. This is my Book Review Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. “On the other hand, we don’t want to be seen as denying the characters the dignity or the truth of what it was really like. LONDON (AP) — Scottish writer Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize for fiction Thursday for “Shuggie Bain,” a novel about a boy’s turbulent coming of age in hardscrabble 1980s Glasgow that was turned down by 32 publishers before being picked up. Shuggie Bain is 5, prissy and precise. It is a sensitive business to put your family, even in fiction, out for the entertainment of the world; it’s one thing not to flinch yourself, but another to insist that your loved ones don’t, either. But most of all Shuggie Bain is a fat doorstop trudge of perseverance through the alcoholic grimness of poverty and addiction. The Booker Prize winner for 2020 has officially been announced and we should now all congratulate Douglas Stuart on his win. Shuggie Bain will shape how Glasgow is seen, and inevitably, how it chooses to see itself. Shuggie’s sexual awakening as a young gay man is woven deftly into the plot, strengthening his bond with Agnes while leaving him friendless at school and exposed on the city’s mean streets. He is a creature entirely out of place in shabby working-class 1980s Glasgow, a changeling who speaks like a prince. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. The price paid was an enormous one. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out … A24 and Scott Rudin Productions have won the rights to Douglas Stuart’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Shuggie Bain, with plans to adapt for television. Stuart was the youngest child (as Shuggie is) of an alcoholic mother, besotted with her own Elizbeth Taylor fantasies (as Agnes is). Meaning of Shuggie. There’s a sort of a pressure on working-class stories to not tell the truth with too much reality.” He spoke of a middle-class gaze that believes it is owed a happy ending or, at least, to be let off the hook for its silent complicity. It took a while, but the bet paid off. Stuart laughed. “Maybe it was my mother reaching out.”, Reaching out to say what? The Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain is set to be turned into a TV series after big-name American producers snapped up the rights to adapt the Glasgow-set book. In 2018, among the group of boy names directly linked to Shuggie, Hugh was the most frequently used. Douglas Stuart joins a potent chorus of contemporary Scottish working-class writers with his Booker Prize-winning debut. “My agent told me it was 20 times,” he said. Suddenly, he said, “you couldn’t make something too expensive.” He left Ralph Lauren for Banana Republic and the promise of a more democratic use of his talents. In 2008, as the Great Recession set the world soul-searching, he began sketching out characters and scenes. Two other protagonists loom large. nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters.”. Stuart wrote Shuggie Bain over 10 years, its long gestation period due in part to the difficulty of finding time to write outside his high-pressure day job. Watch Harry Styles and Phoebe Waller-Bridge Soft Shoe Into the New Year, The duo dance the night away in the music video for Styles’s “Treat People With Kindness.”. “Move IT, Bain! I was particularly struck by one plaintive exchange between Shuggie and his older brother that resonated deeply and highlights the constant obstacles he was compelled to endure: “I am trying, Leek. Stuart is writing out of his own experiences; his own mother died of alcoholism when he was 16. He dropped his new single, and its accompanying video, at midnight. But he also felt alienated from himself. It’s simply unpossible.” Shuggie abhors everything that he deems “common”; he’s the type to stamp his wee foot. ( Log Out /  According to NPD BookScan, which tracks most print sales, the hardcover edition has sold fewer than 5,000 copies to date. He’s there and not there. According to a judge’s ruling on Wednesday. Much is no right in the Glasgow of Shuggie Bain, the hero’s quest of little Shuggie to survive his neo-Dickensian childhood. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. “And then go back to worrying about, you know, do they have almond milk?”. Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. How far can you go to save the person you love before you have to save yourself? How would she feel to be refracted into Agnes Bain, whose pride was her calling card, whose illness was her downfall? Press Esc to cancel. But somehow, despite their cruelties, they are sympathetic. Shuggie is unusual as a baby name for boys. Log in or link your magazine subscription, Cyndi Lauper Joins The Grand Tradition of Weird New Year’s Eve Sets, A Beat-by-Beat Explanation of What Happens in. Shuggie Bain. 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