A
Shuggie Bain The Truth by Emma Owen
s hard as it is, I must break it to you… not every book is a happy one. Not every book results in a satisfying ending, where hope becomes the trajectory and good confronts evil. Sorry to break it to you, but this is not a Jane Austen novel! Love is not the winner, overcoming social statuses and pride. If anything, it’s the pit in your stomach, the dirt in your nails, the exhaustion of your existence. Here, the author, Douglas Stuart, explores the pain and suffering of the protagonist Hugh ‘Shuggie’ Bain as he endures the hardships of life growing up in Glasgow during the 1980’s. Stuart shuns from the glossy sheen that may cover the imperfect ways of society, forcing us to see the corruption.
capitalists against the exploited labourers. The devastating dysfunction of society embeds the collapsing of industry, the rising of unemployment and poverty, the choices that face grim and difficult pathways and Shuggie’s naivety to his own identity. Additionally, the most severe difficulties that are suffered in this relentless novel are alcoholism, abandonment, and co-dependency. Having the most defiant and emotional wreckage upon the damaging destruction of family. We have all grown up, aspiring and idolising the strong connection between parent-child relationships, from the Weasley family in the ‘Harry Potter’ series to Atticus Finch in ‘To kill a Mockingbird’, yet in this novel, Stuart subverts away from typical lovey-dovey and loyal family relationships which are seen as an escapism from the battles of reality, to being one of the main battles in the first place. Stuart instantly captivates us in the first chapter of the alone sixteen-year-old Shuggie steering his own life in a single room, haunted by the other occupants of the house. Struggling for money, begging for jobs, and rationing his supplies- his life urges us to think how did Shuggie end up here? And who is looking out for him?
Within this novel, it’s important to consider the novelties of life, the system of society and the harsh reality that Stuart captures of Shuggie. Whilst pioneering through the truths of Glaswegian living in the 1980’s, Stuart comprises his piece full of the pessimistic ways and the bleak standard of living. Stuart’s Marxist perspective of Glaswegian society achieves the balance of class and status, the large divide of wealth and poverty and the stakeholders and
16