Booker Prize Winner: Shuggie Bain

It does not happen very often that four debut books find themselves on the shortlist for one of the greatest literary prizes, the Man Booker Prize. Even more rarely does a debut book win. However, with the triumph of Shuggie Bain’s this year, it is clear that its author, Douglas Stuart, is a remarkable new literary talent, one who has made an indelible mark in our contemporary literary landscape. The book is about a young boy, Shuggie Bain, growing up in the Glasgow of the 1980s, and his mother Agnes Bain. Intrinsic hues of emotional intensity and human tragedies, filial failures and drug addiction, imbue the book’s narrative. With the microcosm of Shuggie’s sexual growth and Agnes’ dysfunctional life, amidst the macrocosm of Thatcher-wrecked Glasgow, Douglas creates a literary universe so deeply entrenched in the reality of imperfect relationships and an era gone by, it makes pain emerge from the pages and seep into the reader’s psyche.

Although the examination of Shuggie and Agnes’ relationship is emotionally heavy and excruciating, there is a stark, non-judgemental clarity with which the author portrays the characters and their actions. During our discussion about the book, he expresses that love is at the core of this book along with understanding his characters’ damage. Excerpts from our conversation follow:

Congratulations on winning the Man Booker Prize. From a career in fashion design, to your debut book, how and when did writing find its way in your life?
I’ve been writing since a very early age. When you grow up with an alcoholic parent, you develop mechanisms — strategies, tricks — not only to survive their illness intact, but to try to save them as well. At about seven years old, on particularly bad nights, I would try to distract my mother from the drink by playing secretary with my pad and pen while she dictated her memoirs. Then from the age of sixteen I was writing really long, involved letters; corresponding with other boys that I met through queer message boards. There was a wonderful element of world building in that, and letter writing can tell us a lot about storytelling. 

What inspired the writing of Shuggie Bain and what is at its core?
Love is at the core of the book. It’s not an easy love. It’s the unconditional, often tested love that young children have for flawed parents. It’s the type of love that has faith in the hope that tomorrow will be better. While the book is very much a work of fiction, at the heart of it are the memories I carry of growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s. As such there is no one singular point of inspiration, but rather a desire to capture a city, its people, its wonderfully empathetic and resilient spirit. For the main characters, I drew on my own mother’s struggle with drink, with men, with her unrealised dreams. For Shuggie, I knew first-hand how isolating it could be to be gay and effeminate in a patriarchal society.

How did you conceive and build the characters of the book?
All the main characters came to me fully formed. I almost had to ask them to slow down a bit, because they were just bursting to tell me their stories. The only character that I didn’t fully understand the depths of at first, was Agnes Bain. She kept revealing more and more of herself over the ten years it took to write the book and as I got older, I found I could sympathise with her more. Aged forty I could better understand the flattening out of life that can come in middle age, the ebbing away of hope, how we all mourn our youth.

The book lends a rather poignant yet necessary insight into the lives of the working class families during Thatcher’s reign. What led you to locate your debut writing in this context and what was your creative process like behind writing it?
Life was hard under the Thatcher government; unemployment amongst the Glaswegian working class went to about twenty six percent and stayed there for many years. It had terrible effects on physical and mental health - it tore families apart. Glaswegians are natural storytellers and yet I felt that I rarely saw our perspective reflected in the media. Even if something is difficult to face, to write about it honestly is to treat it with dignity. We’re socially conditioned to lie about our poverty, to feel shame about it and hide it away. But that means we deny the existence of people we love. How could I not write about it?

I reflected on quite a lot of personal trauma when I was writing the book and at times it was hard to stare addiction and abuse in the face. Ultimately I found the whole experience really cathartic. There is a control that a writer has. Fiction allows us to bend situations and characters to exactly how we want them to be. It’s the exact opposite to real life. Writing fiction from personal experience will heal the powerlessness you can feel in childhood.

What do you hope the readers take away from the book?
It’s simple really: all I want is for them to think of Shuggie and Agnes long after they have closed the book. It’s what I want as a reader, to feel so attached to a character that I’m bereft when I have to leave them behind. I love that feeling of clutching a book to my chest when I am finished with it, I hope some people feel that with ‘Shuggie Bain’.

Lastly, what are you working on next?
Another love story! I’m finishing up my second novel, LOCH AWE, which is set in mid-nineties Glasgow. It’s about the romance between two young men who are separated by territorial gang violence, across sectarian lines. I wanted to write about the pressure we put on gentle, sensitive young boys to ‘man-up’ and all the terrible things and violence that can flow from that. I am always looking for tenderness in the hardest of places.