Douglas Stuart: Shuggie Bain

It was interesting reading this, his first novel, after his second and I wonder if my responses to both would have been much different had I not done this. All the time I was very conscious of how many aspects here were familiar from Young Mungo – but then, as both are clearly intimately drawn from his personal experiences, that overlap is understandable.

The most striking aspect of this novel was the poeticism of the language used from beginning to end to evoke the horrors of the child’s experiences; this weird discrepancy, between the actions and experiences and the language and imagery used to describe (beauty and horror working hand in hand) it was remarkably powerful and while that was still characteristically there in Mungo, there was a more focused central narrative drive on one character. Here we have several to focus on (and this is reflected by the narrator subtly changing as the story unfolds).

When about half way through (c. P.160 according to my scribbled notes) I was beginning to feel that the relentless darkness was a bit too much and was looking for progress and development – which did come and I think that the sense of similar situations going on endlessly was dramatically necessary and, finally, very powerful.

The death towards the end was heartbreaking. And I think that there were probably aspects of the author in all three child characters -Catherine as she broke away, Leek with his artistic talents and Shuggie as the carer and, incipiently here, gay.