Douglas Stuart, author of “Shuggie Bain”
– Shuggie Bain »came out the week before the pandemic started. Then everyone went home. And stayed there, says Douglas Stuart (45).
The last year has been surreal for the Scottish-American writer. Since winning the Booker Prize last year with his debut novel, it has been translated into 39 languages. And while critics have rolled the dice to sixes and readers have cheered, Stuart has been sitting at home in New York.
Now he is on tour, and is in Copenhagen.
– Only now does it feel as if all this has happened in real life, he says.
Novels can be read along to Glasgow in the 1980s where the city’s industrial landscape is changing rapidly. The reform of the Conservative government has left its mark. Mines, shipyards and the steel industry have been closed down. Unemployment has skyrocketed. Hers lives Shuggie Bain. The father has left and he is growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes. Shuggie gets bullied and feels alienated. An upbringing that is not so different from the one the author himself has had.
Understand the story
– Everything I write I have experienced; homophobia, hatred and prejudice and what it was like to live in Thatcher’s UK. But I do not want people to think these are scenes from my life. Read the book as fiction, says Stuart. – Mother was a single mother and struggled with alcoholism until it took her life. Like Shuggie, I was lonely and struggling to fit into a masculine world.
Douglas Stuart grew up among Glasgow’s working class in the 1980s.
– But writers who wrote about the British working class never focused on women or queer men.
Stuart says the novel is an attempt to correct the story.
– It is written as a tribute to my mother, he says.
His upbringing consisted of a world of women. The mother could not afford babysitting, and went with the son to other mothers, or meetings with alcoholic women.
– As a child it was tough, but as a writer it has given me a unique perspective.
The problems were in the buyer. Often they could not afford mat and the power was turned off because bills were not paid.
– The less we had, the more important it became for mother that we looked presentable when we went out. Now I understand how much strength lies in taking ownership of what the little man can control.
My God for a story!
Clothes and fashion became Douglas Stuart’s means of subsistence. As a 23-year-old, he moved to New York, where he worked to act as Kate Spade and Gap.
– In the novel, clothes are about pride. Although Agnes humiliates herself with stuffing, she puts on her hair and puts on the finest coat before leaving the house. Socio-economically, she has everything in common with her neighbor, but she sends signals that she is better through clothes and language.
Narrow birth
It took Douglas Stuart ten years to write “Shuggie Bain.” He needed time to mature and process his own story. The novel writing gave him the opportunity to familiarize himself with his mother’s situation.
– To walk a few miles in my mother’s shoes. I saw how she struggled with shame on top of the alcohol abuse. It was crushing.
He has spent a long time understanding characters in the novel.
– I wanted to give the story demands by making it as detailed and vivid as possible. If you want to read about Agnes Bain, then I have to take you into the room so you “meet” her and understand the context, he says.
Stuart received around 44 rejections from various publishers before “Shuggie Bain” was adopted. Most publishers do not know how to choose to use a working class boy in Glasgow for Vogue for example?
– I was surprised at how international history is. You can not be skewed to identify with Shuggie, you just need to have felt that you do not fit.
The Iron Woman
Many have been impressed by Gillian Anderson’s interpretation of Margaret Thatcher in “The Crown”.
“Thatcher is portrayed as powerful, but you could not do what she actually did because it could not contain voices from the working class in the entertainment world,” says Stuart.
In the novel, he portrays what Thatcher’s politics had to say for poor families like the Shuggies.
Unemployment rose to 26 percent in Glasgow under Thatcher’s leadership. People lost hope of a better future. Drug and alcohol abuse went up.
Stuart compares it to the unemployment and hopelessness many have experienced during the pandemic, but it has aid packages and an expiration date for the crisis. It had not been in Glasgow in the 1980s. There reigned the “Glasgow effect”, with low life expectancy and poor health compared to the rest of the UK.
– Thatcher’s government knew about this, but did nothing. Glasgow was not politically interesting. The feeling I had as a child was, “No one comes to help. We are fucked “, he says.
Shuggie to screen
Since October last year, the author has been working on turning «Shuggie Bain» into a TV series. It will be directed by Steven Daldry, the man behind “The Crown” and “Billy Elliot”, and Stuart says they hope to start filming next year.
– I have a great love for my character and would like to come over to the screen to take care of them.
But more with converting book to movie, has been more difficult.
Frode (46): – Alcohol worse than drugs
Manuscript is plot driven. I can ‘t tell you about Thatcher’s Britain, I have to show it.
He wished he had asked himself if he really wanted to bring the next four with Shuggie and Agnes.
– I have lived with them for twelve years, and was really ready to release them.
New novel
To ours he comes out with the novel «Young Mungo», her attempt to answer questions asked in «Shuggie Bain».
– We leave Shuggie on the threshold of adulthood. The new book is about Young Mungo, a man from the working class who falls in love with another man, and a beautiful friendship unfolds, but then the problems arise.
Stuart calls it a hybrid between Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and John Boorman’s “Picnic with Death.”
When asked if he is happy that he has slippers to stick to performance anxiety for the difficult second book, he can out in the latter.
– I’m anxious, he says and laughs.
– The good news is that I’m always anxious.