Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart Shuggie Bain is one of those rare books in the literary world that deals with the working class life. I wish there were more of them. It's a world I can relate to, people the likes of which I am all too familiar, and the sordid lives they live as they just try to get by. Like Shuggie's mother Agnes, whose love of the bottle impairs her sight of what she's doing to herself and to her kids. Though a lot of Agnes's troubles were not of her own doing exactly, her response to them is entirely her fault. It's the same old story, one I've seen play out many times. Poor me, look what has happened; I'll make poor choices in order to deal with it and to hell with anyone who gets in my way. My children are just collateral damage. Shuggie Bain hit some personal notes for me, not just with his alcoholic mother and absent father, but with the abuse he himself suffers at the hands of other kids and even one adult man because Shuggie is a ...