Douglas Stuarts neo-Dickensian debut might be the best-reviewed book youve not yet read in 2020.
Shuggie Bainis now available in paperback.
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Shuggie Bain is 5, prissy and precise.
I really do not think I can live here.
It smells like cabbages and batteries.
Shuggie abhors everything that he deems common; hes the key in to stamp his wee foot.
His family smells his inevitable truth, powerless as they are to stop it.
Youll be needing that nipped in the bud, his grandmother tells Agnes.
But most of allShuggie Bainis a fat doorstop trudge of perseverance through the alcoholic grimness of poverty and addiction.
But within a month of publication, The world shut down, Stuart said.
Bookstores locked their gates, Amazon slowed shipping on nonessential items.
And so it sort of was swallowed up is the best way to say it.
And so I just went into a period of resetting my expectations, grieving a little bit.
Maybe the book was always a bit of a tough sell here.
Shuggie is her youngest, her ward, her protector, and her target.
He bobs in her beery wake, no more able to save her than his baby doll, Daphne.
I admire things that are unflinching, Stuart said.
I think thats the highest accolade.
Not everyone has the stomach for it.
When it was submitted to publishing houses,Shuggie Bainwas rejected over and over.
My agent told me it was 20 times, he said.
And then, the other day, she said, Actually, it was 32 times.
But the book has always had its supporters.
I was desperate to buy it, Blackstock told me.
It took a while, but the bet paid off.
Too ugly to look at, too uncomfortable to even comprehend.
And so I used to sit down and I would say, Let me write your book.
And she would love that.
He was encouraged by teachers to read Armistead Maupin and Tennessee Williams.
Andrewss mass-market incest gothicFlowers in the Atticand a set of pleather-bound great books that opened to reveal videotapes.)
A trade was safer.
A masters degree in menswear at the Royal College of Art in London followed.
He did well at Calvin Klein and then at Ralph Lauren, but designing luxury goods was alienating.
Growing up, he had worn clothes out of catalogues that his mother had purchased on layaway.
Suddenly, he said, you couldnt make something too expensive.
He left Ralph Lauren for Banana Republic and the promise of a more democratic use of his talents.
But he also felt alienated from himself.
In 2008, as the Great Recession set the world soul-searching, he began sketching out characters and scenes.
He told almost no one about what he was working on.
It was cathartic to write it, even as fiction, he said.
Americans express themselves, he said.
Americans tell you everything about them.
Stuarts project as a writer is in part about clearing space for tenderness among men, space for love.
But it is also about making room for an honest depiction of working-class life.
Fiction can be an overwhelmingly middle-class pursuit for writers and for readers.
Theres a sort of a pressure on working-class stories to not tell the truth with too much reality.
People like to sort of come along and gawp at the sad bits, he said.
And then go back to worrying about, you know, do they have almond milk?
Hes there and not there.
He has only one sibling left living, a sister in Glasgow.
She readShuggie Bainbefore he even looked for an agent and gave her blessing.
Maybe that was Gods … he began, then corrected himself.
Maybe it was my mother reaching out.
Reaching out to say what?
She has been gone almost 30 years; shell never know thatShuggie Bainis dedicated to her.
I think my mother felt so unseen in life, he said.
I think my mother would be thrilled.
