Shuggie Bain

Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain 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’s 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. Shuggie is meanwhile 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. Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

Book club questions for Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Much of Shuggie Bain is set in Pithead, a run-down public housing scheme in 1980s Glasgow. When Agnes Bain finds that her husband, Shug, is moving the family from her parents’ flat in Sighthill, she thinks life will be better in the mining town, but instead she finds that Pithead is just a collection of miners’ houses on the edge of town with no longstanding social, economic, or cultural fabric to hold it together. How does that compare to America’s Rust Belt cities and Appalachian towns? How does it compare to Sighthill?

In Chapter 5, the author paints a grim picture of a girl’s life in Glasgow as Catherine makes her way through a Saturday. Even considering the menacing series of events that lead Catherine running to the pallet fort that day to find Leek, were you surprised by the threat from a gang of young boys to give her a “Glasgow smile” over something as seemingly petty as her allegiance to this or that football team? What does that say about the role sectarianism plays in Glasgow? What kinds of racial or religious parallels can you draw with American culture, both regionally and nationally?

Before moving to Pithead, Shug, Agnes, and her three children are “all crammed together in her mammy’s flat, [giving Agnes] a feeling of failure.” Instead, Agnes dreams of having her own front door, a garden, of “flitting” to a fresh start with Shug despite the overwhelming challenges his cheating and her alcoholism present. When Shug finally moves them, instead of it being a new beginning for them, he unexpectedly dumps the family in a council flat where tough, down-on-their luck women—their husbands emasculated by unemployment—run the community. How does this environment change the way you viewed Lizzie, her card-playing friends, and Agnes’s life in Sighthill?

Agnes is painted throughout as both neglectful and in thrall to her addiction but also as a tower of pride and strength. On pp. 267–68 these conflicting sides of her are described: “…some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but Shuggie looked at her now and understood this was where she excelled. Every day with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise.” How did these irreconcilable depictions play in your head while you were reading? Or are they reconcilable?

The raw honesty of the characters in Shuggie Bain is almost shocking to an American ear. Nobody holds back, not even the kind man who runs the taxi garage where Agnes takes refuge in the rain and who right away sizes Agnes up for a drunk the day she’s on her way to pawn her mink coat. Unlike other characters, he seems bent on helping Agnes, suggesting AA to her over a cup of tea. What do you make of the unapologetic candor—both kind and rough—in this book? Is there something to this Glaswegian honesty that Americans could benefit from?

Shuggie’s femininity is ridiculed and weaponized by both children and adults. He is sexually assaulted by Bonny Johnny, the washing-machine boy, without even understanding what Johnny seems to plainly see in him or what a “wee poof” is. Leek tells him to be “normal for once” to which Shuggie replies, “I am normal.” Colleen tells Agnes: “Ye should focus yersel on that poofy wee boy of yers.” In the United States we talk about being “closeted” and “coming out.” At least in this part of Glasgow at this time, there appears to be no such closet for Shuggie or much tolerance for his being effeminate. How does this line up with your experiences with people’s sexuality and gender identity in the United States? How does Agnes, in her way, give him the armor to withstand what people rain down on him?

Throughout the book, Shuggie treats Agnes with the utmost tenderness, even when she’s at her worst. He cares for her physically, emotionally, and economically, as when he skips school to get their Tuesday Book. We often talk of the children of alcoholics taking on the role of parent and by all rights, Shuggie does. Indeed, he’s been abandoned to that role by both his father and his siblings. Still, his tenderness remains. Given everything one might judge Agnes for, what does she give Shuggie that he needs and/or values in return? What about her makes her a sympathetic character when viewed through his eyes? How does that stack up against everyone who has left him?

For better or worse, Agnes has undeniable power over men. When Shug moves her to the Pit and she discovers that he’s not staying, she asks him, “Why the fuck did you bring me here?” His answer? “I had to see if you would actually come.” What did the following passage reveal to you about Shug and Agnes: “She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.” Did this change the way you viewed Agnes? Did it make you root for her? How did this revelation affect the way you viewed the balance of power between Agnes and Shug?

How did you react when Agnes was the only one who helped Colleen in the street the day Jamesy left her—even if she felt a bit of satisfaction in it? When Colleen described their marriage, did that change your perspective about what happened between Jamesy and Agnes? What about Colleen’s remark that she “didnae want any more mouths to feed” after Agnes had coveted her family?

So many people seem to want to keep Agnes down. Shug wants to break her so there are no pieces left for another man to repair. Jinty uses her as a support for her own alcoholism, even going so far as to offer up Agnes in exchange for a bag of carry-out in a devastating scene. All manner of men take advantage of her both casually and violently. But Eugene seems really to like Agnes and want a life with her. Were you surprised when he pressed her to drink again at the golf club despite her pushback?

When Leek threw Agnes’s first anniversary party, how did you react?

When Shug takes Shuggie to Joanie’s house while Agnes is recovering from her suicide attempt, Joanie’s council scheme is described: “What was once built to be new and healthful now looked sick with a poverty of hope.” Joanie “had a concrete front yard and an asphalt backyard, and therefore they paid a higher rent rate to the council.” What do Agnes and Joanie’s very different yards reveal about them?

Shuggie Bain Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Shuggie Bain discussion questions

Winner of the Booker Prize

Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction

Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction

Finalist for the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize

“We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love. The book gives a vivid glimpse of a marginalised, impoverished community in a bygone era of British history. It’s a desperately sad, almost-hopeful examination of family and the destructive powers of desire.”

—Booker Prize Judges

“The body—especially the body in pain—blazes on the pages of Shuggie Bain . . . This is the world of Shuggie Bain, a little boy growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s. And this is the world of Agnes Bain, his glamorous, calamitous mother, drinking herself ever so slowly to death. The wonder is how crazily, improbably alive it all is . . . The book would be just about unbearable were it not for the author’s astonishing capacity for love. He’s lovely, Douglas Stuart, fierce and loving and lovely. He shows us lots of monstrous behavior, but not a single monster—only damage. If he has a sharp eye for brokenness, he is even keener on the inextinguishable flicker of love that remains . . . The book leaves us gutted and marveling: Life may be short, but it takes forever.”

—New York Times Book Review

“The tough portraits of Glaswegian working-class life from William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, and Agnes Owens can be felt in Shuggie Bain without either overshadowing or unbalancing the novel . . . Stuart’s capacity for allowing wild contradictions to convincingly coexist is also on display in the individual vignettes that comprise the novel, blending the tragic with the funny, the unsparing with the tender, the compassionate with the excruciating. He can even pull off all of them in a single sentence . . . This overwhelmingly vivid novel is not just an accomplished debut. It also feels like a moving act of filial reverence.”

—James Walton, New York Review of Books

“A debut novel that reads like a masterpiece, Shuggie Bain gives voice to the kind of helpless, hopeless love that children can feel towards broken parents. Shuggie and his mother live in an 1980’s Glasgow subsidized-housing apartment tower, where she drinks and he explores his sexuality under circumstances that allow for scant imagination about a different future for either.”

—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post

This book of the month and discussion guide are shared and sponsored in partnership with Grove Atlantic.