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.