We’re talking about books again today and I hope you’re on board with that. I should say, we’re talking about one book today and it’s a book I hope you will read and then discuss with us later on this spring.

The book is Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. It’s a powerful and difficult book, it won the 2020 Booker Prize and was a finalist for several other awards and prizes. It reminds me a bit of A Little Life and it’s just an incredibly brilliant debut novel.

As I usually do, I am sharing the GoodReads description:

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie’s mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good–her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion’s share of each week’s benefits–all the family has to live on–on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes’s older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is “no right,” a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her–even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of Edouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell. (less)

Kym and Bonny and I will be sharing thoughts about this book over the next couple of months and we plan to have our online and Zoom discussion in early June. It’s a popular title but we are confident that you all are resourceful and will be able to get your hands on it in time.

There’s so much to discuss with this one, I really can’t wait to hear what you all think of it. Happy Reading!

Okay, readers, the day you’ve been waiting for has arrived . . . it’s time to talk about Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Bonny and Kym and I are each posing one question about the book for our online discussion and then we’ll be hosting a Zoom meeting tonight to dig a little deeper with a live chat.

My question has to do with the grocery store trip that Amanda takes right at the beginning of the novel. Do you remember the list of things she purchased? It’s rather pretentious and I think says a whole lot about the lifestyle of this family. Here, I’ll quote a bunch of it for you.

She bought yogurt and blueberries. She bought sliced turkey, whole-grain bread, that pebbly mud-colored mustard, and mayonnaise. She bought potato chips and tortilla chips and jarred salsa full of cilantro . . . organic hot dogs and inexpensive buds and the same ketchup everyone bought. She bought cold, hard lemons and seltzer and Tito’s vodka and two bottles of nine-dollar red wine. She bought dried spaghetti and salted butter and a head of garlic. She bought thick-cut bacon and a two-pound bag of flour and twelve-dollar maple syrup in a faceted glass bottle like a tacky perfume. She bought a pound of ground coffee . . . those fancy crackers you put out when there were guests, and Ritz crackers, which everyone liked best, and crumbly white cheddar cheese and extra-garlicky hummus and an unsliced hard salami and . . . packages of cookies from Pepperidge Farm and three pints of Ben & Jerry’s politically virtuous ice cream and a Duncan Hines boxed mix for a yellow cake and a Duncan Hines tub of chocolate frosting with a red plastic lid, because parenthood had taught her that on a vacation’s inevitable rainy day you could while away an hour by baking a boxed cake. She bought two tumescent zucchini, a ag of snap peas, a bouquet of curling kale so green it was almost black. She bought a bottle of olive oil and a box of Entenmann’s crumb-topped doughnuts, a bunch of bananas and a bag of white nectarines and two plastic packages of strawberries, a dozen brown eggs, a plastic box of prewashed spinach, a plastic container of olives, some heirloom tomatoes wrapped in crinkling cellophane, marbled green and shocking orange. She bought three pounds of ground beef and two packages of hamburger buns, their bottoms dusty with flour, and a jar of locally made pickles. She bought four avocados and three limes . . . it was more than two hundred dollars, but never mind.

Wow, right?

So here’s the question: How does this list reflect her background and her hopes for the days ahead? Think of a trip or a vacation you’ve taken in recent years and how you prepared for it. What do you think your approach to planning a trip says about you? How is it similar or different from Amanda’s approach?

The trips to Cape Cod that I take with my family every summer are pretty similar in concept to the vacation that Amanda and her family are taking. Just like them, we rent a house and, just like them, we mostly eat in. My approach is to plan meals for the week and make an extensive list and do a big shopping trip with little trips for fresh bread or other things later in the week. I definitely tend to splurge at the grocery store when we’re on vacation. I’ll buy the more expensive cheese, the prepared snacks from the deli, the high end olives and crackers and the fancy ice cream.. I indulge to treat myself and my family to things I would normally deem too expensive, to make meal preparation easier, and I justify it by telling myself that it’s still less expensive than eating out.

I suppose that says that I’m a planner who is practical but enjoys little luxuries like fancy cheese. I’m certainly not as boujee as Amanda, though!

I look forward to reading your thoughts on this passage in the comments.