Photo: Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times/NTB
For many, childhoods aren’t dreamy. It’s a coin toss after all; who we get for parents, where we get to live, the time/era of our birth, our genetics. There are many chances for a sub-optimum experience when, as children, we are at our most vulnerable. For those of us who are lucky, we mustn’t forget fate’s substantial leg-up.
Shuggie Bain is one of the unlucky ones. In Douglas Stuart’s semi-autobiographical novel by the same name, Shuggie is in a tough position. He’s an effeminate little boy born into Glasglow’s working class in the cruel 1980’s, when the ship building industry has closed down, the mines are shut, and it doesn’t pay to be different, if it ever did. His family is a bit of a mess too. Between Big Shug, his philandering father, and his beautiful alcoholic mother, Agnes, things are bleak, but Shuggie dances on, maniacally so.
‘He danced for her, stepping side to side and clicking his fingers and missing every beat. When she laughed, he danced harder.’
Shuggie’s attempts to assuage his mother’s endless bout of the ‘poor me’s’ drives this novel and the family’s situation devolves further when Big Shug moves the family into the depressed mining estate of Pit Head on Glasgow’s fringe and then leaves Agnes for Joanie, the calm telephone operator at the cab company where he works. Of Pit Head, Stuart writes:
“The land had been turned inside out. The black slag hills stretched for miles like the waves of a petrified sea.”
Deprived of the nightlife of inner Glasgow, Agnes secretes alcohol around the house and hits it even harder. In her mind, such a thing shouldn’t have happened. She is beautiful and keeps herself nice. Agnes’s spite is fuelled by Special Brew lager, as she sits at the phone ringing the cab rank at all times of the night, screaming down the receiver at Big Shug. Stuart paints her well, from her flawless Pretty Polly tights in Jet Black to her high heels. In the midst of Pit Head poverty, there is Agnes tripping down the road to cash her social security check and stock up on Special Brew. But Shuggie loves her. Even once his step-siblings have given up and left, Shuggie stays on, taking a role of parent to his often drunk mother.
As for Shuggie, he’s called a ‘dafty wee poofter’ on a daily basis. This little boy knows there’s something different about him, but unlike everyone else, he can’t figure it out. The scene where Leek, his older step-brother tries to help is utterly memorable.
‘”Don’t cross your legs when you walk. Try and make room for your cock.”… They strutted like two cowboys across the flat upturned earth.’
Throughout this novel, little Shuggie is as endearing as he is unfortunate. He is often told his mother won’t change, but he counters always with ‘but what if she does?’ It’s his capacity for love no matter the cost. That ability to commit and remain committed is astonishing.
Douglas Stuart humanises addiction from the inside out. It’s brutal, but its full of heart. Sure, Agnes is a little spoilt, but she’s also in the grips of a terrible disease and there are times when she knows it. Stuart returns again and again to Shuggie’s mother, who is a wonderful, though tragic character. In her, he captures the devastating effects of addiction and the pride which goes hand in hand with it. We see her walk from the outskirts of Glasgow in a mink coat she plans to pawn, all the while pretending to be a woman of means. We see her sniff at her neighbours in their saggy tights and uncombed hair and like, Shuggie, we still love her.
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