RaveThe Sunday Times (ZA)The words \'powerful\', \'compelling\' and \'a universal story\' are used in many book reviews. Rarely are they as appropriate as when applied to Shuggie Bain. Douglas Stuart\'s transcendent debut novel might be set in the bleakest reaches of Glasgow in the 1980s, but the characters that pop and crackle and snap in Scottish dialect from its pages are people we know: people with fatal flaws and lovable eccentricities; people trying by whatever means possible to crawl through to the end of each grinding day; people fed and fuelled by the illusion of a better tomorrow. They are us ... No matter whether you are in Durban or Darfur, every human in this book will rip out your heart and wring tears from your eyes ... simultaneously heartbreaking and spirit-lifting.
