It is the story of Shuggie Bain, a boy who grows up in a poor and dysfunctional family in Glasgow in the eighties. The father of the house lives elsewhere but is still a presence, the mother is an alcoholic, his brother cares for him, but has his own challenges, and his elder sister is more pre-occupied with her own life. We follow the family over a long period of time, long enough to get to know each of them in detail: their life dreams, their mishaps, their continued courage to move forward despite the hardships, the gossip of the neighbourhood, the progress and the relapse, the anger and the love.
Shuggie tries to zigzag his way through these chance events, trying to get some control over what is happening, or at least over his own life in this context of repeated setbacks. Yet to Stuart's credit, this novel is not a long complaint about social injustice and human hardship, it is also a book of love, of hope, of dreams and of human warmth. The characters are likeable, charming even, and you wish all of them to succeed and to do better in life. Stuart brought a fictitious family to life in a way that's rarely been done in literature.
On the downside, the book is long and often repetitive, obviously somehow needed to depict the Sisiphean struggle against poverty, but I think it could have been a lot shorter without losing its qualities.
I also learned about the religious football divide in Glasgow, with Rangers supporters being Protestant while Celtic fans supporting the Catholic Church.
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