
Shuggie Bain
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Narrated by:
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Angus King
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By:
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Douglas Stuart
This is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.
Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: She is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits - all the family has to live on - on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.
Agnes’ older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Meanwhile, Shuggie is struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right”, a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her - even her beloved Shuggie.
A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction.
©2020 Douglas Stuart (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...




















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LISTEN TO THIS ONE
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Heartbreaking.
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As I listened to the narration, I kept being reminded of "Grapes of Wrath," despite the fact that while Shuggie moves a few times over the course of the novel, the Joads cross half the North American Continent. But then again, maybe that's indicative of how differently Americans and Scots view landscapes.
More importantly, in Shuggies tale, he is moved about by his alchoholic mother, whose frustration with her lot in life is truly the bain of the entire families existence; but still, one could argue that Agnes' frustration with her lack of social standing result from the fact that she and her family have been discarded, like many, many, many others, by the inhumane government run by Margaret Thatcher and her cronies.
In telling the story of little Shuggie, Stuart lets us know just how true it is when we hear that Thatcherism was unforgiving and demoralizing for huge numbers of people, and despite the fact that almost everyone gets out of the story alive, none are left untraumatized. And we all know that traumatized people pass on their trauma to their successor generations, sometimes ad infinitum, until the traumas are addressed.
Douglas Stuart got out of Scotland, and ultimately wrote this beautiful novel, but after listening to the last few moments of this audibook, one is left with the sense that even he has not fully healed from the traumas out of which this novel sprang.
Shuggie Bain Is As Good As All the Hype
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A book so good I forgot it was 2020
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A slow burn
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Amazing
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I wanted to adopt Shuggie Bain.
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Sad and poignant
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Quietly subtly engaging
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A great listen for a hard to hear story
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