This was one of those books about people living such a different experience from mine that had me constantly stopping to smh & wonder, “How do they keep going on like that?” Obviously, addiction is a hurdle that a person with damn little self-esteem or sense of worth is going to have a hell of a time trying to get over. And draggging new humans into the world with no real sense or ability to care for and bring them up properly isn’t going to make any of this any easier. For anyone.

I worried that this was some sort of poverty porn, some sort of “well at least I’m not THAT fucked up/fucked over,” pat on the back: but it doesn’t leave me with a sense of superiority, but with a desire to learn more about how one gets into such a bad situation. These depths of sadness and despair can’t be laid only at the feet of the individuals who spend their energies trying to game a system that seems content to blame them for every failing while offering little or no respite from the grinding work of being poor & pathetic. Because it does take a lot of work not to wind up even farther down the social ladder than where Shuggie & his mum reside. I mean, they’re downwardly mobile, but they are trying to slow that descent as much as is possible given their limited resources.

It’s not an uplifting tale of resilience but an captivatingly written series of snapshots of a mother with 3 children trying to live in and about 1980’s Glasgow at the mercy of misogyny, homophobia, alcoholism, capitalism, and the shattered dreams and subsequent apathy that flourish in those conditions. I mean, not everybody dies, but the future for the survivors doesn’t seem to require any sort of eye protection, well, except maybe to keep the shards of metal & glass out.