Shuggie Bain

The Resource Shuggie Bain
Label
Shuggie Bain
Statement of responsibility
Douglas Stuart
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, is a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good - but under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away all the family has to live on -- on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her -- even her beloved Shuggie
Cataloging source
ATCDL
Index
no index present
Literary form
fiction
Target audience
adult

Context

Context of Shuggie Bain

Work of

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Randwick City Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.