Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart was born and raised in Glasgow. After graduating from the Royal College of Art in London, he moved to New York City, where he began a career in fashion design. His short stories, ‘Found Wanting,’ and ‘The Englishman,’ have been published by The New Yorker magazine. His writing on Gender, Class and Anxiety was featured on Lit Hub. Shuggie Bain is his first novel. Bain is shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Shuggie Bain (Grove Press) is the story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, 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 about to explode. Shuggie’s mother Agnes is both a guiding light but also a burden for him and his siblings. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes orders a little happiness on credit, keeps her pride by looking good but increasingly finds solace in drinking. 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. Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Publishers Weekly noted “Stuart’s harrowing debut follows a family ravaged by addiction in Glasgow during the Thatcher era . . . There are flashes of deep feeling that cut through the darkness.”