Bibliotheken Online

Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart

Buch

Englisch

Stuart, Douglas (Verfasser/-in) DNB

Picador

London

2020

430 Seiten

1-5290-1928-1

978-1-5290-1928-5

Winner of the Booker Prize 2020. Ausgezeichnet mit dem "Booker Prize 2020".

Debütroman
Glasgow / Schauplatz
Armut
Mutter-Sohn-Beziehung
Sechzehnjähriger Junge / Hauptfigur

A heart-wrenchingly moving first novel set in Glasgow during the Thatcher years, Shuggie Bain tells the story of a boy's doomed attempt to save his proud, alcoholic mother from her addiction. It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother's sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no' right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place. Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty", it also recalls the work of Edouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, a blistering debut by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell. (Quelle: The Guardian)##Shuggie Bain is Douglas Stuart’s first novel. Based on his own childhood, it is a searing account of a young boy growing up in Thatcher’s Glasgow of the 1980s, with a mother who is battling addiction. Stuart, 44, dedicated the book to his own mother, who died of alcoholism when he was 16. After graduating from the Royal College of Art, he moved to New York to start a career in fashion design, working for brands including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Gap. He started writing in his spare time a decade ago. His work has since appeared in "LitHub" and in "The New Yorker" [...]. #Margaret Busby, 2020 chair of judges, editor, literary critic and former publisher, said: "Shuggie Bain is destined to be a classic - a moving, immersive and nuanced portrait of a tight-knit social world, its people and its values. The heart-wrenching story tells of the unconditional love between Agnes Bain - set on a descent into alcoholism by the tough circumstances life has dealt her - and her youngest son. Shuggie struggles with responsibilities beyond his years to save his mother from herself, at the same time as dealing with burgeoning feelings and questions about his own otherness. Gracefully and powerfully written, this is a novel that has impact because of its many emotional registers and its compassionately realised characters. The poetry in Douglas Stuart’s descriptions and the precision of his observations stand out: nothing is wasted." (Quelle: thebookerprizes.com)##Stimmen zum Buch:#"We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love." (The judges of the Booker Prize)#"Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty." (Observer)#"A debut novel that reads like a masterpiece, Shuggie Bain gives voice to the kind of helpless, hopeless love that children can feel toward broken parents." (Washington Post)#"A boy's heartbreaking love for his mother . . . as intense and excruciating to read as any novel I have ever held in my hand -brilliantly written." (Newsday)