A MASTERPIECE OF SCOTTISH ANGST

 Shuggie Bain is heart-rending. This reader is thankful that it’s just a fictional story but is left to wonder how much of it is autobiographical. Set in 80s Glasgow, bleak, bleaker, and bleakest sums up the harrowing tale. The story, like the Glasgow Subway (The “Clockwork Orange”), travels full circle, ending where it starts.

As one who grew up on the west of Scotland and had worked in Glasgow, it was a delight to be able to read something written primarily in unashamed Glaswegian, (though a few Americanisms here and there, such as aluminum and ladybugs, have found their way into this masterpiece of Scottish angst). For those who grew up in Scotland’s industrial west in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a lot of the story’s content will painfully cut to the bone, and cause unwelcome flashbacks.

I admit to being like one of those rubberneckers that ghoulishly gawk at a serious car smash, causing traffic to backup for miles behind them. I recoiled at much of the book’s subject matter, but couldn’t help but keep on reading to see what terrible thing would happen around the next bend.

I think the following line sums up the whole book: “Shuggie felt the noodles in his belly turn into worms.”   

Stuart is the master of metaphor. The book is full of symbolism, (especially in its final chapter). Like losing your dinner money doon the stank, Stuart’s visually descriptive language always lends itself to embellishing the dank, dour, and dreich subject matter with the added notion of a sense of hopelessness.

The dark and damp subterranean subject of the entrapment of alcoholism in social housing schemes is brilliantly depicted by Stuart’s painful but skillful use of the (tattooist’s) pen.

A friend described the book as brutal. I agree. It is full of foul language and gross sexual description and innuendo. It’s not for the fainthearted.