Shuggie Bain is a story about a mother and son whose relationship is taut with the stress of alcoholism. Shuggie is a loving, patient, persistent, and odd boy who wants desperately for his mother Agnes to be happy, but Agnes is hell-bent on destroying her closest relationships and drinking herself into oblivion. Through it all, Shuggie is struggling with his identity; how can he have time to find his sense of self if he has to take care of his alcoholic mother?

Douglas Stuart amazes me again with his prose, the way he so easily invokes the grim and despair of his setting and the tenderness of his characters. this being said, at times there were descriptions that started to feel repetitive, particularly when it came to Agnes' drinking; it seems that, since there are simply so many scenes where she is drinking the same cheap lager, that Stuart at a point runs out of words to describe it. it was a bit disappointing, but paradoxically pretty effective at frustrating me with Agnes' drinking.

in fact, repetition is one flaw i have to take up with Shuggie Bain. so much of the book's shocking moments are diluted by their repetition

like Agnes' suicide attempts, the men in her life taking advantage of her, and Shuggie's bullies

. i think Stuart dances on a line here, where the repetition is somewhat intentional to bring us on Shuggie's emotional journey; we get tired of what happens because we should be, because it is indeed grating, because Shuggie himself is tired and bored from the same tragic occurrences. in terms of a novel, though, it whittles down the reader's sense of engagement. i think Young Mungo is more refined in this way, and is more successful for me personally as a result. but Shuggie Bain is still a heartwrenching story that excels in its goal: to make us empathize with the characters, as flawed as they may be, and to make us live their lives with them. 

in fact this empathetic tactic works so well that i found myself adopting similar thought processes as the characters. i felt the same desire to escape as Catherine, the same watchfulness of Leek, the same weariness of Shuggie. it was so cool and so, so emotionally interesting.

though i felt Shuggie's love, i couldn't fully understand it. there is no ideal Agnes that Shuggie wishes her to return to that we see in the novel--all he wants is for her to get better, because she is his mom, which is a noble enough effort but gives the reader a hard time siding with him when he refuses to part with her. i wish we had been able to see a bit of her good traits instead of only her bad ones.

i felt such an overwhelming sense of relief when Agnes died, which i think was intentional on Stuart's part, but found it hard to mourn her when it was clear i was supposed to. i empathized with her, of course, but i think that her death would have been more impactful if we had seen more into her goodness. as it stands, i am saddened by her death because the death itself is a tragedy; not because she herself is dead.

this shows that again, as with Young Mungo, Stuart reaches near emotional climax but ultimately misses the mark with its payoff. there are scenes i wish would linger longer while there are less impactful scenes that i wish were cut short. it's an odd thing that i haven't seen many readers of his criticize, but it's a hangup i simply cannot get over.