Shuggie Bain is heartbreaking, but never mawkish – and already a favourite with readers
Though there were four debuts on the Booker shortlist, it’s been more than a decade since a debut won. And with two magisterial novels from established writers in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body on the list, first-timer Douglas Stuart’s success may come as a surprise. But it will be an immensely popular one, for readers have already taken Shuggie Bain to heart: it was the bestselling novel on this year’s shortlist, and the favourite to win.
Stuart’s tale of a Glaswegian childhood in the 1980s, blighted by parental addiction and the deprivation of Thatcher’s Britain, is a bolt from the blue: extraordinarily immersive, heartbreaking but never mawkish, a clear-eyed story of love and resilience in the most difficult of circumstances.
