Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize for 2020 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for 2020.  Set in Glasgow during the Margaret Thatcher period of the closure of mines and the deterioration of industries throughout the UK, it is a book of this desolation occurring and its effects on one particular family.  Although titled after Shuggie, the story revolves around his mother Agnes who has grand ambitions, but fails to achieve them due to the circumstances of the time and to alcoholism which is affecting many others, including most of the residents hanging on in a small council-owned neighborhood at a closed mine where she and her three children find themselves living as her second husband leaves them and her life starts truly unraveling.  Shuggie is the youngest child and the one trying to most and giving up last in terms of helping his mother even has he never reaches beyond the age of 14 in the years covered by the novel.  Plus, Shuggie continually encounters problems of his on throughout the book for regularly being perceived as and taunted for being a "funny" boy.  Several reviewers have compared this book, covering the poverty and hardships of Glasgow in the 1980s, to those by Dickens covering the similar aspects life in London in the 1800s.  It is well written.  Although distressing, hope remains throughout including hope for Shuggie at the end of the story.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020--San Antonio

Apeirogon by Colum McCann took me longer to read than most novels.  The author calls it a hybrid novel.  There is an ongoing story built around the true lives of two men--an Israeli and a Palestinian--who have bought lost young daughters to violence and who both have become speakers for an organization promoting peace between Palestine and Israel.  At the same time, there are detailed extraneous bits of information which either eventually relate directly or indirectly to something in the story line.  Reading the details and keeping everything in mind to see how they eventually are meaningful is what slowed me down.  Instead of reading 75 or so pages a day, I found myself reading 25-40.  The book was long-listed for the Booker Prize, named one of the best books of 2020 by BBC, and called a "once in a generation masterpiece" by the Observer.  The story and complexity of its construction made this a fascinating book.  When I balance that with the frustration of following it, I decided to give the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Sunday, Dec. 6, 2020--San Antonio

Real Life by Brandon Taylor is the story of a young black graduate student who grew up in Alabama and is now at a major Midwestern university.   It was a relief for him to leave Alabama due to the systemic discrimination he faced both for being black and for being gay.  But the former still exists in the Midwest where he is expected to be less intelligent, less capable, and less dedicated in his student lab research activities.  Like many people of color have said is a necessary ingredient to living their lives, he studies and works harder and for longer hours to try to give no excuse for their expectations to be true, yet they are still assumed by a competitive student and the lab supervisor.  He is friends with a cohort group of graduate science students who welcome him into their fold.  In his 3rd year of studies, he knows these friends quite well and spends time with them, but he has no one special in his life.  The one member of the group to whom he feels an attraction is straight.  The book covers topics such as their daily lives, the personal interactions with each other, the limitations of what they let the others know about themselves, etc.  At times, the detailed information about the lab work and even the detailed conversations between the friends seems to cause the story to drag with no real purpose.  But at other times, I found I didn't want to put the book down.  The book was a finalist for the Booker Prize and a New York Times notable book of the year.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.