SHUGGIE BAIN by Douglas Stuart

The title character of this bleak, semi-autobiographical novel is a gay boy growing up with an alcoholic mother in Glasgow, and to describe it as dreary and depressing is a huge understatement.   The mother, Agnes, apparently resembles Elizabeth Taylor, but there is nothing beautiful about her behavior toward her three children.  Shuggie is the youngest and therefore the most dependent on Agnes, but, in reality, she is dependent on him emotionally, and he serves as an accomplice to her addiction at times.  Unfortunately, not even his unconditional love can sustain her.  Her needs interfere with his schooling, as he is habitually truant, and her craving for alcohol trumps his health and well-being every time.  A brief period of sobriety is cut short in the most cruel way, and, for me, this event is the most devastating one in the novel.  It is really the last straw, as far as her older children are concerned, as well as for me as a reader.  This book is at least 150 pages too long, I think, because Agnes’s family just becomes increasingly despondent as her problem rages on, unabated, page after page, with no hope on the horizon.  Plus, the dialog is full of Scottish dialect, which perhaps adds to the book’s authenticity but increases the thankless challenge of reading it.  The language did become marginally easier to decipher as I became more accustomed to it, but I would have gotten the picture with a lot fewer pages.