FINISHED READING - Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Though this is a novel, it bears similar themes and period to Damian Barr's memoir Maggie & Me. Douglas Stuart draws upon his own working class upbringing, but has chosen to liberate himself from factual retelling in order to bring a fictionalised universality to it, still bleakly real and occasionally horrifying.

The novel pivots around the character of Agnes Bain, who is Shuggie's Mother. A spirited resourceful woman, who is uniquely house proud. Always prepared to apply a defiant glamour to her appearance. All so she can hold her head high even in the shit hole of a housing estate, she's been abandoned to by her taxi driver husband. She has two fatal weaknesses, a besotted attachment to men who are serially unfaithful, heartless slobs and an addiction to alcohol. All her children at some point try to save their Mother from the latter, but having failed several times, eventually rescue themselves by abandoning her to her fate. The pain of watching her descend into irreversible alcoholism becomes too hard to bear. Eventually only young Shuggie remains, but for how long?

Shuggie Bain is a devastating novel, in both its storyline and the vivid quality of the writing.  It reminded me of Arthur Miller plays, where rough cut working class characters try to battle their way out of fatal nightmarish circumstances. All set within a fatally predestined narrative hurtling towards its denouement like Greek tragedy. You can sense from the beginning that things are never going to end well for Agnes. In the middle of a successful dry rehab, you know this is just a brief pleasant pit stop on the motorway to a much darker oblivion. It's a hard read at times, but a brilliantly realised one. You never lose sympathy with the characters even as they make yet another bad judgement. Their human failings burning them up from within. 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8