positiveonly – Page 2 – R. P. Bolton Author

MY VERDICT? This prizewinning novel is not for the faint-hearted. The eponymous Shuggie suffers appalling neglect and abuse and the author is unflinching in his portrayal of poverty. A stunning telling of a painful story.

THE BLURB: It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother’s sense of snobbish propriety. The miners’ children pick on him and adults condemn him as no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

Buy from Bert’s Books: https://bertsbooks.co.uk/product/shuggie-bain-booker-longlist-2020-6th-august-2020/

bookblog, books, bookworm, douglasstuart, fiction, positiveonly, reading, reviews, rpbolton, shuggiebain

MY VERDICT? Be prepared for a lot of graphic childbirth descriptions! Beautifully written Irish fiction set in the 1918 pandemic. A story about love and loss between women that seems eerily relevant today.

THE BLURB: Dublin, 1918. In a country doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

Buy from Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-pull-of-the-stars/emma-donoghue//

books, bookworm, emmadonoghue, fiction, positiveonly, reading, reviews, rpbolton, thepullofthestars