A beautifully wrought yet harrowing tale of poverty & addiction.
I recently read a blog post by a terminally ill man, he stated that life is beautiful and cruel, that that they are inextricably linked. https://jakeseliger.com/2023/07/23/how-do-we-evaluate-our-lives-at-the-end-what-counts-what-matters/ .
This is the overriding feeling I took from this book, with a heavy weighting on the cruel. Shuggie's misplaced (?) love for his alcoholic mother Agnes the only beauty here (apart from the writing itself).
The work is actually mostly focused on Agnes not Shuggie, told often but not exclusively through his eyes. The supporting cast have interesting tales too, the section on Agnes' parents during the war in particular stood out.
The structure of the book helps it hit hard, we are spoonfed the backstory as we decend deeper into drink-fuelled misery. Like "Requiem for a dream" with Special Brew replacing the heroin.
While I don't understand the depths of alcohol addiction, I can't understand the seeming need for the women of the book to bag a man, any man. Even if jobless, disgusting, abusive, a rapist...still Agnes and others place such value in having (or keeping) one. Maybe it is part of a status game, because it's not simply financial, but wow, play another game lassies, they are no good for ye.
The book is very Scottish, very Glaswiegen actually, it will sound better in your head if you know a Glaswiegen in real life!
I doubt it is a point of the novel, but the bleak view of 80s Thatcherite Glasgow actually made me come around to some right wing views (not easy to say coming from a Labour heartland part of the country!). I'm sure more could have been done to retrain miners & greatly improve schooling for instance, but it seems the residents of Pithead could have helped themselves too. The deep rooted, multi-generational reliance on benefits that were good enough to get by on forms part of the hellish poverty trap. We see Leek & Cath both moving away to escape it successfully.
Glasgow, like the much closer to me Liverpool, is much improved today. Though both still have entrenched areas of extreme deprivation, resulting in the lowest life expectancies in the UK (around 55, lower than most sub-Saharan African countries). Lack of education, later work, and terrible general health indicators driven by smoking and drinking compound. It's a tough problem, just throwing money at the issue won't solve it, though it will help. Recent research from the US seems to show a deep scarring for those who suffer during recessions - many people fail to recover and slip into despondency & dependency (alcohol and later heroin in 80s Glasgow, Oxycodone then heroin & fentanyl since 2008 in the US). There must be ways to target the high risk groups for positive intervention.
I've read that the story is semi-autobiographical, that many of the events happened to the author though not the whole story, ouch what an upbringing - amazing he has went on to achieve so much in several fields. A worthy Booker prize winner.