Shuggie Bain — By Douglas Stuart
I actually felt a little daunted about starting this blog post because of how beautifully Shuggie Bain is written. It is one of those rare books that you read that never truly leaves you; I will remember Shuggie and Agnes Bain and the author, Douglas Stuart, who created them for a very long time.
There are numerous reasons for which Stuart’s writing is so poignant, and I will try my best to give justice to a few. There is a unique frankness in his writing that is unapologetically forthright. Even within the opening sentence, “The day was flat.”, you get the sense that this is The Way Things Are, and that’s just that. I think it comes from the book’s writing style or, more specifically, the way sentence structure is used so masterfully to convey meaning. I always admire a writer who holds the audience through short and snappy sentences long and meandering passages. It reminds me of music in films or dance (not that I have much experience of this, I must add). With the horrible abuse handed down on Shuggie, our protagonist, the lines are often delivered bluntly with little reference to inner feelings at all. In doing so, I found Stuart was able to convey so much more than words could.
This brings me on to the books second character, Agnes Bain. Her character’s front-facing glamour hides a life plagued with alcoholism, poverty and abuse. Yet, I am afraid I can’t quite consolidate my feelings towards her. As with all of the characters in the book, she’s a product of her environment — the ruthless slog of poverty. However, I think I felt let down by her failure to stay sober. I can’t marry up this sympathy for the hand life dealt her with the resentment I feel for her disregard of Shuggie. Like her children, I lost faith in the end.
“The rubber tip had worn away from around the right heel, and although she had coloured the shoe in with an old black bingo marker, the sharp metal nail scraped the floor with the screech of hard times.”
I haven’t read a book like Shuggie Bain before, and the only book I can think that is somewhat similar is Trainspotting. The book exposes a weakness at the heart of British society, a nation so seemingly wealthy: the stark poverty faced by many both when this book is set in the 1980s and today. The post-industrial cities in the North showed symptoms of poverty, joblessness, boredom, addiction, which soon became chronic for families such as the Bains. Even as Agnes and her family move from the flat to the Pithead home that promises so much but gives so little, poverty follows them. They escape Pithead only to find themselves in a similar situation in a different city. It becomes evident poverty is trapping, and there is no way out. It is the same with Agnes’ addiction. She is stuck in a cycle with each hope of freedom quickly banished.
After I finished Shuggie Bain, I realised that the book’s format itself reflects how poverty and its impact (like addiction that is examined in this book) can be cyclical. The book begins and ends in 1992, thereby offering a stark reflection on the journey between and, sadly, clarity on how little changes. The reader can take stock of the desolate trauma, the hopes tarnished, and love lost. It is hard to imagine how anyone finds their way out.
Things to think about
Privilege
I’ve not read a book with an examination of class like this one before. It made me think about my privilege, having grown up in a southeastern town with good grammar schools. Shuggie Bain is set in a Thatcher-era working-class town in the west of Scotland. The towns are deprived of resources, money and pathways to jobs. This was a systemic problem caused by years of austerity and a policy-induced recession. The north/south divide in the UK has been under the microscope recently with Boris Johnson’s vows to “level up” the country. We’ve heard the phrase before under a different title of “Northern Powerhouse”. I do believe there is a southeastern bias in politics that results in inequality. Just yesterday, I read that while Oxford has increased its admissions of state-educated pupils to record levels, many offers go to students in the South East. Is being a working-class kid in Tunbridge Wells the same as in Hartlepool? I’d hazard a guess at no.
Resilience
While I don’t claim to be wise, nor do I have the years to try to impose much-lived experience, I am constantly amazed by the human races ability to just get on with it. We are a species of survivors (or perhaps of dominators) that have weathered thousands of years on earth. Now, I know in the grand scheme of thing that’s no time at all, but it’s a way of keeping faith when you feel like life is throwing curveball after curveball. More to the fact, when people are dealt a poor hand like our dear friend Shuggie, simply carrying on is a feat in itself. As I get older, I realise that life isn’t fair; things don’t always work out and, sometimes, the Things end up a bigger mountain than you ever thought you’d need to climb. But we do climb. Resilience and strength supercharge our feet, and we get up and moving over the mountain. We even get the chance to watch a beautiful sunset when we ascend to the other side. Life goes on, and it is okay.
