Free shipping on orders over $99
Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain 3

Winner of the Booker Prize 2020

by Douglas Stuart
Paperback
Publication Date: 25/02/2020
4/5 Rating 3 Reviews

Share This Book:

 
$19.99

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life.

She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. 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. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother's sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as 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.

Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Edouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.

ISBN:
9781529019285
9781529019285
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
25-02-2020
Publisher:
Pan Macmillan
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
400
Dimensions (mm):
235x155x35mm
Weight:
0.55kg
Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York, where he began a career in fashion design. Shuggie Bain, his first novel, won the Booker Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ‘Debut of the Year’ and ‘Book of The Year’ at the British Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the US National Book Award for Fiction, the Kirkus Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and his essay on Gender, Anxiety and Class was published by Lit Hub. He lives in New York.

Click 'Notify Me' to get an email alert when this item becomes available

Reviews

3.67

Based on 3 reviews

5 Star
(1)
4 Star
(1)
3 Star
(0)
2 Star
(1)
1 Star
(0)

3 Reviews

I found the story sad and depressing. But then it's not really a story, it is more of a documentary and caution to drink in moderation.

Contains Spoilers No
Report Abuse

I couldn't put this haunting book down. Loved it.

Contains Spoilers No
Report Abuse

Struggled to finish it.
Disappointed

Contains Spoilers No
Report Abuse