Glasgow in the early 1980s is a city hollowed out by the collapse of heavy industry, where families scrape by on the dole and pride costs more than it can afford. Into this world Douglas Stuart sets Agnes Bain — glamorous, proud, and dreaming of a better life than the one she has — and her youngest son, Shuggie, a tender, watchful boy who is "no' right" by the standards of the hard men and women around him.
As Agnes sinks deeper into alcoholism, abandoned by her husband and slowly by her older children, it is Shuggie who holds out hope the longest, caring for his mother and clinging to the belief that if he can only be normal, he can save her. Around them, the novel maps the brutal texture of poverty, addiction, and a boyhood spent learning he is different in a place with no room for difference.
Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain is Stuart's semi-autobiographical debut, written in vivid Glaswegian voice and shot through with unexpected tenderness. Devastating and compassionate in equal measure, it is a portrait of the fierce, doomed love between a mother and her son.