![]() ![]() Her children cope with her episodes in the only way they know, by distinguishing her alcoholic persona from her sober self with a special name, “Tattie-bogle, like some heartless, shambling scarecrow.” His mother, “Mo-Maw”, is another alcoholic, though lacking some of Agnes’s warmth and charm. Our protagonist, the Mungo of the title, is a delicate Glaswegian boy who knows no world beyond the East End. Young Mungo begins with a setting barely distinguishable from Shuggie’s. No one was altogether to blame, no one altogether exempt from responsibility. What distinguished the book from your average misery memoir was the richness and detail of the picture Stuart painted of working-class Glasgow in the 1980s, a world of pawnshops, AA meetings and giro queues. ![]() Stuart’s unvarnished portrait of her gin-soaked neglect was certainly not forgiving. Shuggie Bain could just as well have been named after Shuggie’s impossible, charismatic, alcoholic mother, Agnes. ![]() It took its time, didn’t try to explain everything, and trusted its readers with dialogue in dialect and characters who were hard to love. Douglas Stuart’s Booker-winning debut, Shuggie Bain (2020), didn’t earn its well-deserved popularity with the “common reader” by being undemanding. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |