Shuggie Bain

I really didn't want to read this. The black and white cover and the story of a Glasgow boy growing up gay with his alcoholic mother. Literary misery porn parading gay suffering. When it wins the Booker it only confirms my suspicions about how inevitably bleak and dire the story would surely be. And then I'm tasked to review it for the Booktube Prize so I begrudgingly pick it up.

I'm immediately hooked. Shuggie is growing up in council housing surrounded by unemployed miners, dirty faced kids, drunken gossips and folks prying open electric meters to steal the coins within. Meanwhile Shuggie's mom is drinking herself into a stupor, screaming into the telephone, raging against the men she's hard done by, putting her head into the oven, setting the bedroom on fire, and driving away her two eldest children. Agnes is just a huge character on the page. Despite her faults Shuggie remains steadfast, can see the effort she puts into appearances, her fierce unbroken pride that stands with her back straight even as she's sinking in the grey.

It's less gay trauma and more the resilience of love even in the face of a challenging person, clear eyed about their flaws and faults and loving them just the same. It's heartbreaking but comes from a place not intent on mining Agnes or Shuggie's misery in some showy literary way but instead a confident portrayal - warts and all - of a complicated woman. Pure gallus.