Shuggie Bain: A Novel

"This is written by a Scottish writer and set in 1980s, Thatcher-era Glasgow. It’s about the poignant connection between an unusual child and his mother, set in a marginalised community. It’s tender and upsetting at the same time; but hopeful in the way it looks at family and desire. It’s one of those books, like others on this shortlist, where once you have engaged with the characters they will be hard to forget. It’s full of both heartwarming and heartbreaking situations. The author has pulled it off so well, it’s amazing to think that it is a debut. British commentators have really focused on the American aspect of our shortlist, though the fact is we did have British authors on the longlist, and there were many excellent stories set in Britain that were hard to let go of, and which I’m sure the judges will champion in other ways. But – and I’ll reiterate here what I’ve said elsewhere – when you start to read a book, you’re not thinking, ‘Where does this writer live? Was this writer born in Britain?’ I think it’s misleading to try to erect such literary walls. All the books on the shortlist are published by British publishers; I wouldn’t say they are displacing British writers, or British-born writers, or white-British writers, or writers living in Britain. It would narrow things down if you started to worry about where each writer is based, or born, or has travelling to or from, before reading the books. I didn’t know when I read Shuggie Bain what its author’s connection was with America. But it just so happened that our shortlist this year has highlighted these themes and literary energies. It tells you something about what British publishers are looking for, perhaps. It may be a sort of insecurity – the assumption that everybody out there is going to be better than us; ‘us’ being the British. But you don’t have to stay put in Britain, as a British writer, and British writers are informed by the rest of the world. We shouldn’t try to put a border around one writer or one country or one prize, to protect its interests. I think every writer who has a possibility of winning or being shortlisted will be considered, so long as they are published by a British publisher. I don’t see why one should worry about it. I mean, you might as well say ‘British publishers shouldn’t publish so many American writers.’ That would be crazy."

"Yes, very deservedly. It’s set in a very poor area of Glasgow. It’s about a little boy called Shuggie Bain. One of the things I really loved about it is that it’s very hard to write a long book. You’ve got to be George Eliot or Charles Dickens , or Alexis Wright . Shuggie Bain is a good, big, meaty piece of fiction, and yet there’s not a minute where it feels like he was fattening it out. There was never a moment when I thought, ‘Yes, I’ve got it now.’ We’re with this boy as he grows, we’re with him as he moves house, we’re with his family. He goes off to play outside on these slag heaps, and there’s this constant feeling of, ‘Oh, he’s going to get injured, this vulnerable boy growing up learning how to be tough.’ I grew up in a materially very privileged family and the life and world of Shuggie Bain is totally outside of my reach. So to be in that world and to experience it through this little boy’s eyes and through Douglas Stuart’s eyes… because I suppose, with the best books, you feel they’re autobiographical as well. Maybe Douglas Stuart grew up in Honolulu and has nothing to do with Glasgow whatsoever, but I had the strong feeling that this was pulled from his own experiences. I could be wrong about that, but that’s what makes it such a brilliant book. It’s got a great ending. We leave Shuggie when he’s a teenager. I’ve got a memory of him being at a bus stop, and he’s just making that next leap into adulthood. Also, as with other great novels— Lord of the Flies does this as well—you forget Shuggie’s age. You’re so in the protagonist’s world, you forget he’s just a little boy. And then you get these great zoom shots when you pull back and see him through other people’s eyes, and he’s just a little kid playing on his bike or whatever it is. Your heart goes, ‘Oh my gosh, this tough little kid.’ There’s also a real visceral sense of the weather—the cold and the damp—and also the sharpness of the stones. Douglas Stuart does all of that absolutely beautifully as well. It’s a really good juxtaposition because it’s the 1980s. It’s not the wildness of gay London. It’s not the moneyed world of Martin Amos. It’s the roughness of Glasgow, and the slag heaps up north, where money has not filtered through and these kids are just surviving and being loved. It’s brilliant."