Shuggie Bain is a tragic and heartbreaking novel with no happy ending, but I think this coming-of-age story set in 1980s Glasgow is worth every second you will spend reading it.

The titular protagonist of the novel, Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, is five years old when his father, Shug, abandons him, his mother Agnes and his two older siblings at their new home in a derelict public housing scheme outside the city called Pithead. Shug is tired of Agnes’s drinking; he is also a philanderer who moves in with another woman and her kids. Shuggie does not see much of his father after that; instead, he is left to fend for himself as his mother sinks deeper into her alcoholism, his sister gets married and moves to South Africa and his brother sinks into depression. Shuggie is friendless and bullied by the other kids in his neighbourhood, who call him a “wee poof” because he speaks the Queen’s English and is fastidious in his appearance, both of which he learned from his mother. His “difference” from other kids also makes him the prey of sexual predators. As Shuggie gets older (the novel follows his life to age 16) he begins to wonder about his sexual identity, but also how he can fit in and not be what everyone thinks he is.

Shuggie Bain is not just Shuggie’s story, though. It is also a story of a vibrant woman whose life is destroyed by alcohol addiction. Shuggie’s mother, Agnes, is a beautiful woman with big dreams, but she ends up disappointed with her life. She struggles against being controlled by men, such as her first husband, a good Catholic man and a stable provider who wants her to be a stay-at-home mom and housewife, which is not the life that Agnes wants, so she leaves him for the handsome, Protestant Shug. Shug, her second husband, also wants her to stay at home, but only because he is a jealous man and does not like the idea of his beautiful wife being out of the house. Shug is not a stable provider and does not even have a home for Agnes and her children; they end up living with Agnes’s parents until Shug abandons her in Pithead.

Agnes drinks to cope with her disappointment, but her alcoholism only makes her depressed and suicidal. She still has the presence of mind to be prideful, though, and takes special care to appear done up every time she leaves the house to get the week’s welfare money to spend on booze. But she does not make sure that her children are properly fed. Agnes is at odds with her older children, but Shuggie is still young enough to be devoted to his mother and take care of her. He learns at a very young age to gauge Agnes’s moods when she is drunk, to try to keep her away from the other alcoholics in the neighbourhood, and how to hide some of the welfare money so there is enough food to scrape by on.

Shuggie’s childhood is not completely bleak. There is a period of time when Agnes is able to summon the willpower to attend AA and stop drinking, but this just makes the events that follow even more devastating. I know that I am probably making this novel sound depressing AF, but when you learn that Shuggie Bain is based on the author’s own childhood with his alcoholic mother, it does give you hope that Shuggie will be okay. Shuggie Bain is an authentic portrait of growing up queer and poor in Glasgow in the 1980s, with its dialect and slang, and its descriptions of the ingenuity of the working poor who always find ways to game the system for money, the clash between the Catholics and the Protestants, people’s inability to understand addiction, and the fear and hatred people feel towards those who do not act “normal”. I highly recommend this novel.