Shuggie Bain

Summary

In 1980s Glasgow, a sensitive boy named Shuggie devotes himself to caring for his glamorous, alcoholic mother Agnes as their family fractures under poverty and a collapsing industrial economy. Stuart writes in a tender, granular Scots-inflected English, refusing both sentimentality and easy uplift. The novel is at once a portrait of addiction and a love letter to the children who try to hold their parents together.