It is a painful autobiographical novel that takes us breathless in the early 1980s in a working-class – that is to say poor – district of Glasgow, Scotland. Heavy with the difficult reality that a child must face: the alcoholism of his mother, social and economic misery, his own homosexuality and the leaden cloak of the Thatcher years.
Shuggie Bath, the first book by Douglas Stuart, born in Glasgow in 1976 and now a fashion designer in New York, was crowned in 2020 with the Booker Prize, the most prestigious British literary prize.
After leaving the father of her first two children for a taxi driver, Agnes, a late-40s housewife with serious drinking problems, has not really improved her lot. Due to lack of money, the new couple and the children will be forced to move in with Agnes’ parents, before having a new child, Shuggie – who is followed in the novel from early childhood until the beginning of the year. ‘adolescence.
The man had been promising her for years a house with a “private entrance”. When he finally keeps his promise, it is to move her to a mining district on the outskirts of the city, gloomy since the closure of the coal mine, just before abandoning it for another woman.
A soulless setting where neighbors, sometimes also in bad shape, look at these new arrivals as one observes fairground animals. It feels like we’re in a Ken Loach movie – without the silver lining and human kindness.
Catherine and Alexander, her oldest children, flee the house as soon as they can. Nothing will hold this woman back from sinking body and soul into alcohol, creating a void around her with cans of cheap beer and vodka, tantrums and interchangeable lovers.
Shuggie, the youngest, yet made it his mission to save and watch over her. At eight years old, for example, he is able to put her head to the side for fear that she will choke on her vomit. For Shuggie, the ordeal is twofold. A different and hypersensitive child, he was branded with a hot iron by his homosexuality. The people of the neighborhood do not forgive him and constantly harass him.
From one government allowance check to another, from falls to relapses, from meetings of alcoholics anonymous to suicide attempts, her mother came to her senses each time promising the child to make a fresh start. “When she’s very drunk I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself,” Shuggie tells a neighbor. Before leaving for school, the child sometimes hides all the pills in the bathroom, while his older brother takes his razors to work every day.
Chronicle of a rugged childhood, on the alert, much too short, story of an impossible rescue and emancipation, Shuggie Bath is also a heart-wrenching romance of a son’s unconditional love for his mother. Heartbreaking.