Shuggie Bain was ‘written from a place of trauma and personal loss’, says Douglas Stuart

Douglas Stuart, who won the Booker Prize for his debut Shuggie Bain last November, explained how the book - which features an alcoholic woman, Agnes, and her young son - drew on his own relationship with his mother, who likewise struggled with addiction. It was written “from a place of trauma and personal loss.”

Speaking to Bryony Gordon for the latest episode of her mental health podcast Mad World, which you can listen to using the audio player above, Stuart continued: “To take trauma and to turn it into a book, or into any art...I think is one of the best things you can do, especially when you’re a man. And maybe nobody’s asked you about your feelings throughout your life or to express yourself - especially men from the west coast of Scotland. And so making a piece of art...was about the best I could do with the hurt that was inside me.”

He recalled that his earliest memory of his mother was her “hard drinking”, before she tragically “died of heroin addiction” when he was 16. Almost 30 years on, he was writing the book “from a sense of loss and grief and waste.” He added: “Although it is a work of fiction - I have to say I wouldn’t want anyone to look at every scene and try and tie it back to my life - I do write from a feeling of what it is to lose the person you love most.”

Stuart noted how difficult it is for a child in that situation to predict their parent’s behaviour. “Will it bring out sadness, will it bring out anger, or will it bring out the need for a party and a good time?” He continued: “Sometimes children of addicts feel like their parent’s addiction is somehow their fault, because they’re not doing the right thing... Somehow it belongs with them. And of course it doesn’t. But we can’t help but feel that.”

For the novel to then go on to win the Booker Prize made him feel “wonderful” for his mother “and for all the women like [her] that lost the struggle with addiction. Because it was never that they were voiceless… It was that society doesn’t like to listen and we never did.”

It was also an astonishing result, given that Shuggie Bain was originally rejected by numerous editors. “My agent told me it was turned down 20 times, and then she revealed later it was 44.”

Stuart told the podcast that winning the Booker made him reflect on how he’d grown up in a house with no books. He explained that it wasn’t just the lack of books that was the issue, but not having the peace inside himself to “sit down and concentrate. And I think we overlook how much of a luxury that is for a lot of kids.” You need an environment “free from concern about food or what’s happening with your parents...and kids just don’t have it.”

As for the recent debate over free school meals, Stuart mentioned how it’s lifeline for Agnes and Shuggie in the book, adding: “We have to care for one another, because there will be kids going through desperate times right now.”

Stuart also addressed the homophobia that he endured, and which features in the novel, but said he tried not to judge people in the past when “writing with a 2020 mindset… There was some misogyny that was homophobia, and they were perfectly accepted within society in a way.”

Winning the prestigious Booker was hugely meaningful for his self-image. “I think it erases so many feelings of inferiority I’ve carried with me throughout my life. And some of that’s class, and some of that’s about ‘What right did I have to see myself in literature?’ Because I never saw myself in literature. And for a minute, it just makes me feel incredibly valid.”

Visibility is also important in regional terms, he argued, recalling how, growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, the focus of the media was on the south. James Kelman winning the Booker in 1994 was, he said, “pivotal for me”, but he noted the backlash to Kelman’s victory “from within some of the publishing communities.” It was a sign of progress, he believed, that the culture had “moved on” by the time Stuart won.

Stuart, who is currently in New York, said he can’t wait to get home to Scotland, as he hasn’t yet seen his book “in a Scottish bookstore or a British bookstore. That’s just the weirdness of 2020.”

But he has found time to write in this pandemic year. He announced that he’s “wrapping up [his] second novel”, and hopes that it will be out in 2022. It’s not a sequel, but there are related themes, with Stuart going back to look at “young men growing up queer in Glasgow, and how are they going to make it? So I’ve written this love story between two young men who are separated by territorial sectarian lines. All they want is to be in love.”

Listen to Douglas Stuart's full interview on Bryony Gordon's Mad World podcast using the player at the top of this article, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app.