Shuggie Bain

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020.

A heart-wrenching moving first novel… Shuggie Bain tells the story of a boy’s doomed attempt to save his proud, alcoholic mother from her addiction. There’s no way to fake the life experience that forms the bedrock of Douglas Stuart’s wonderful Shuggie Bain. No way to fake the talent either. Shuggie will knock you sideways, Richard Russo. Every now and then a novel comes along that feels necessary and inevitable. I’ll never forget Shuggie and Agnes or the incredibly detailed Glasgow they inhabit. This is the rare contemporary novel that reads like an instant classic. I’ll be thinking and talking about Shuggie Bain – and teaching it – for quite some time. — Garrard Conley, New York Times-bestselling author of Boy Erased.