Douglas Stuart Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020

Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books,Literature,Fiction by Douglas Stuart with 448 pages.

Details Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books,Literature,Fiction :

Title : Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020
Brand : Douglas Stuart
Category : Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books,Literature,Fiction
ISBN : 1529019273
Page of number : 448 pages
Publisher : Picador; Main Market edition (6 Aug. 2020)
Language : English
Dimensions : 16.3 x 4.5 x 24.1 cm

Usually Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books,Literature,Fiction are sold at a price of 11,49 to 14,99

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Books,Literature,Fiction Shuggie Bain: Winner of the Booker Prize 2020 by Douglas Stuart Winner of the Booker Prize 2020Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2020The Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2020‘Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.’ – ObserverIt is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest.Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. The miners’ children pick on him and adults condemn him as no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, a blistering debut by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.‘We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.’ – The judges of the Booker Prize

I read this book and can relate to the unemployment, the poverty and the destruction of communities that happened in Scotland at this time and still does .I do have one big gripe with this book and it is the way he has portrayed the mining communityI was brought up in a mining community before during and after the closure of the pits by Thatcher and her toxic governmentThe author portrays the miners as heartless dirty useless drunkards and the women as feckless loveless hags The children run around as feral animals covered in filth He sees the community as people with no pride in themselves.He describes a scene where a woman has just found out her husband has cheated on her ,she is outside and rips her skirt in distress to reveal she has no underwear on! as if to suggest she is such a slob she can’t be bothered to cover her dignity. Shame on him for his portrayal of these womenThe mining community I know are proud hard working resourceful people who look after each other Who are intelligent and quick witted especially when it comes to politicsGardens are their pride, my family and neighbours gardens had blossoming flower beds in the front and an array of vegetables in the back garden. They also tended allotments. We were all well feed with an abundance of healthy fresh fruit and vegetables not just boiled cabbage.We were all spotlessly clean as well due to the diligence of the women. Miners working in thick black coal dust day in day out didn’t give in to it, they hated it. If you met a miner after work or on his days off you would be hard pressed to find a more clean spotlessly tidy man and mums made sure their families were the same . Ah but not according to the author They were all filthy stoor covered inbreds(everyone is a cousin ) with no pride in how they dressed.I recently read an interview he gave describing his upbringing and I am happy hes has done so well howeverIt has made me very angry that this book will be read world wide and he has given the impression that this is how we lived. Sighthill looked like utopia compared to Pit head I am not impressed. .

EDIT: WORTHY WINNER OF THE BOOKERSome books never leave you. Once read, they sit in the background of your mind, resurfacing whenever life confronts you with the story’s subject matter.In the same vein as Yanagihara’s A Little Life (also shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Shuggie Bain is brutal to the point of having to put the book down at times. This is not a light or easy read, it is a journey into the lives of people broken by their circumstances and upbringing, yet filled with unfiltered love. You will cry with sadness, anger, and despair.I lived just outside Glasgow at the end of the time in which this book was set. My ex-wife was equal to Shuggie’s mother Agnes in her descent into alcoholism and have children who lived through her worst excesses. No other book or film I have seen or read has portrayed alcoholism more accurately than this one. It is stark. It is painful to witness. It is reality.My time in Scotland helped me hugely with this book. I am sure many will struggle with the language and vocabulary used. In an interview, the author said that both he and the publishers, for reasons of authenticity, wanted to keep the Glaswegian slang and vocabulary.This book is not just a story of the child and his alcoholic mother, it is a documentary of the poverty and deprivation in Glasgow in the 1980s. It is a page-turner and is beautifully crafted by the author. A book that could and should win the Mann Booker. It is a future classic.Read this book, but pick your time, because it will affect you.I really hope a sequel is planned. The next stage of Shuggie’s life will have much to tell. I for one would love to share in his journey into adulthood.

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