Starred review from November 1, 2019

DEBUT This compulsively readable debut novel follows a boy growing up in 1980s and 1990s Glasgow, Scotland. It opens in 1992 with Shuggie Bain at age 15 living alone in a boarding house. Where is his family? The rest of the book provides answers. We first meet Shuggie at age six living in a tenement with fashionable mother Agnes, father Shug, stepsiblings Leek and Catherine, and his grandparents. Shuggie likes dolls and is what would today be called gender-nonconforming. In exquisite detail, the book describes the devastating dysfunction in Shuggie's family, centering on his mother's alcoholism and his father's infidelities, which are skillfully related from a child's viewpoint. It also shows how daily trauma within the family wrecks a child's psyche, a situation made doubly hard for Shuggie as he is not accepted by his peers. Agnes is eventually lured by Shuggie's father into living in an isolated community outside the city, which exacerbates her alcoholism and leads to a downward spiral. VERDICT As it beautifully and shockingly illustrates how Shuggie ends up alone, this novel offers a testament to the indomitable human spirit. Very highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 8/5/19.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 18, 2019
Stuart’s harrowing debut follows a family ravaged by addiction in Glasgow during the Thatcher era. Agnes Bain yearns to move Shug, her taxi-driving, “selfish animal” of a second husband, and three children out of the tiny apartment they share with her parents in Glasgow in 1981. Shug secures them a council flat, but when they arrive he leaves them in a flurry of violence, blaming Agnes’s drinking. While Agnes’s daughter, Catherine, escapes the misery of Agnes’s alcoholism and the family’s extreme poverty by finding a husband, and her older son, Leek, retreats into making art, Hugh (nicknamed “Shuggie” after his absent father) assumes responsibility for Agnes’s safety and happiness. As the years pass, Shuggie suffers cruelty over his effeminate personality and endures sexual violence. He eventually accepts that he’s gay; meanwhile, Agnes finds some hope by entering A.A., landing a job, and dating another taxi driver named Eugene, but she later backslides. As Shuggie and his mother attempt to improve their lives, they are bound not just by one another but also to the U.K.’s dire economic conditions. While the languid pace could have benefited from condensing, there are flashes of deep feeling that cut through the darkness. This bleak if overlong book will resonate with readers. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
Alcoholism brutally controls the destiny of a beautiful woman and her children in working-class Scotland. The way Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting carved a permanent place in our heads and hearts for the junkies of late-1980s Edinburgh, the language, imagery, and story of fashion designer Stuart's debut novel apotheosizes the life of the Bain family of Glasgow. Stunning, raven-haired Agnes Bain is often compared to Elizabeth Taylor. When we meet her in 1981, she's living with her parents and three "weans" in a crowded high-rise flat in a down-and-out neighborhood called Sighthill. Her second husband, Hugh "Shug" Bain, father of her youngest, Shuggie, is a handsome taxi driver with a philandering problem that is racing alongside Agnes' drinking problem to destroy their never-very-solid union. In indelible, patiently crafted vignettes covering the next 11 years of their lives, we watch what happens to Shuggie and his family. Stuart evokes the experience of each character with unbelievable compassion--Agnes; her mother, Lizzie; Shug; their daughter, Catherine, who flees the country the moment she can; artistically gifted older son Leek; and the baby of the family, Shuggie, bullied and outcast from toddlerhood for his effeminate walk and manner. Shuggie's adoration of his mother is the light of his life, his compass, his faith, embodied in his ability to forgive her every time she resurrects herself from a binge: "She was no use at maths homework, and 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. Everyday 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 can love be so powerful and so helpless at the same time? Readers may get through the whole novel without breaking down--then read the first sentence of the acknowledgements and lose it. The emotional truth embodied here will crack you open. You will never forget Shuggie Bain. Scene by scene, this book is a masterpiece.

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January 1, 2020
While Glaswegian Stuart's first novel begins with, ends with, and is titled for young Shuggie Bain, the book, like Shuggie himself, revolves around Shuggie's mother, Agnes. In the 1980s and early '90s in Glasgow, Agnes can't hide her alcoholism any more than Shuggie can fit in with other kids. They and Shuggie's taxi driver father, the original Shug, live in an apartment with Agnes' parents until Shug moves them into a moldy little house on the outskirts of a defunct coal mine and jumps the family ship. Left to her own devices in gloomy, gossipy Pithead, Agnes maintains an elegant appearance and a round-the-clock buzz, while Shuggie becomes an expert in studying their meager government benefits and his mother's many moods. He finds a precarious foothold as Agnes' caretaker and slowly builds his defenses against those who call him "a wee poof" and do him physical harm. Perfect for getting lost in, Stuart's richly wrought coming-of-age saga is a trenchant portrayal of poverty and addiction, true to life and steeped in its era, setting, and dialect.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)