Summary
Agnes’s and Shuggie’s small tenement flat in the East End of Glasgow, compared with the isolated estate in Pithead, is surrounded by life and city movement. Shuggie reads from the little red book of football match scores to memorize them and become like a normal boy. Meanwhile, Agnes goes out and gets drunk, returning to pick a fight with Shuggie, who demands to smell her breath. She goes to every neighbor’s door and introduces herself, drunk by lunchtime. On his first day of school, Shuggie is teased by classmates for his posh accent and for seeming gay. Shuggie concludes that neither he nor Agnes will get to be brand new.
Keir Weir, the boy who lives downstairs, knocks on Shuggie’s door and says he’s taking him out to meet “lassies.” He musses Shuggie’s hair and tightens the cord on his anorak, telling him to look more “hardcore” and like less of a poof. Keir explains that Shuggie needs to keep Keir’s girlfriend’s friend occupied so she doesn’t bother him. Shuggie wonders if this is the moment that will make him normal. The girl, Leanne, is a foot taller. She is curious about Shuggie, and guesses that he doesn’t have a dad. He says his dad is dead; she says her dad is also dead. She asks if he even likes “lassies.” He says he doesn’t know. Leanne says she doesn’t know if she likes boys either. She asks Shuggie to be her boyfriend anyhow, “just for the now.” Shuggie agrees. Her hand feels safe to him when he holds it.
Leanne and Shuggie sit by an overpass as Keir and his girlfriend make out on the ground. Keir catches Shuggie looking at his “arse” moving up and down. Shuggie offers to comb Leanne’s hair with the comb Keir handed him earlier. As he does, marveling at the colors, they discuss how both their mothers are alcoholics. Leanne says she figures all alcoholics want to die and are taking the slow road to death. Shuggie feels something loosen in him. He relates to Leanne the difficulty of not knowing what you’re returning home to. Leanne says it’s her job to empty the pockets of men who come to sleep with her mother. She says her mother drank cologne last Christmas and sold the presents for drink money. Shuggie admits Agnes tried to kill herself the night before by jumping out the window naked. Leanne casually relates the time’s her mother has tried to commit suicide by putting her head in an electric oven that half-cooked her face. Leanne asks if he has been to Alateen, an offshoot of AA for children of alcoholics. Leanne says she went once, but everyone was poncy. And if her mother can’t attend the meetings, why should she? Shuggie says he thinks the drink will kill his mother, and it’ll be his fault. Leanne says it will probably kill her, but there’s nothing he can do to help.
Shuggie comes home from school and complains to Agnes about being hungry. She resents that he isn’t asking how she is. They argue about how there’s no food in the house because of her drinking. The tone of the conversation becomes more serious as Shuggie learns she’s spent the Monday and Tuesday benefits on drink and bingo. They both agree they’ll starve. As Shuggie gets up to steal crisps from the newsagent’s, Agnes says he’s leaving like all the others and rings for a taxi to collect him. Shuggie protests, but Agnes insists he’s kicked out and tells him to go to his brother’s. As she watches Shuggie get in the taxi, she knows she’s that she has lost Shuggie.
When the cab driver asks Shuggie for twelve pounds to pay the fare, Shuggie insists he can get it from his brother. The man says he knows Shuggie will just run away and says they’re going to the police if he can’t pay. Shuggie offers to let the driver touch his penis or play with his bum. The driver asks how old he is. Shuggie says fourteen. The driver unlocks the cab and says, with a pitiful look in his eyes, that he only takes cash. In Leek’s bedsit, Leek makes instant noodles. The brothers discuss their mother’s drinking, with Shuggie insisting he might make her better if he keeps himself tidy and is good to her. Leek says the drink will put her out on the street eventually, once her looks go and the men are no longer interested. Shuggie says he’ll never leave her in that case. Leek says she’ll have a taste for kicking Shuggie out now and do it again.
Shuggie asks why Leek didn’t come back to get him. Leek says he can’t take care of Shuggie, only Shuggie can take care of himself. He says Catherine never came back for Leek either. The buzzer goes and Leek goes down, worried Shuggie let Agnes know Leek’s address. He comes up with a bag of tinned Bird’s custard and explains Agnes sent it over in a taxi. Leek bursts open his electricity meter to pay the driver. Another cab arrives. Leek goes down and comes up with Agnes’s telephone in a bag. He and Shuggie know this means she’ll try to hurt herself and won’t try to contact anyone when she does. Leek says the cab is waiting to take Shuggie back to Agnes’s.
Time passes. Agnes spends her birthday in March drinking and wandering outside by a river until the police bring her home. Shuggie leaves a cup of tea outside her door while she sleeps and then heads off on a bus to Sighthill, walking to the sixteenth floor of his grandparent’s old building. He reads a card Leek had sent from the place he moved for work. When Shuggie returns, Agnes has passed out in her chair. Shuggie wipes the bile and fluids from her lips and puts her head safely to the side. He tells her he is going to leave school as soon as he can and get a job so they can move away. He removes her bra and skirt for her, then massages her scalp. She is stirring but not responding. Bile gurgles up her throat. Shuggie goes to wipe it but then stops. He watches her cough and says, “Suppose maybe Leek was right.” Agnes gurgles again and her head falls back. Bile bubbles over her lips. Her eyebrows crease, her body tenses, and Shuggie considers using his fingers to help. But her breath hisses away. The worry falls away from her face and she looks peaceful at last. It is too late to do something, but Shuggie shakes her. She doesn’t wake up. He cries for a long time after she has stopped breathing. Eventually he cleans up her face with a tissue and then kisses her a last time.
The last chapter of the novel returns the narrative to 1992. Shuggie is cleaning Agnes’s precious ornaments in his bedsit when he notices a chip on the ear of a fawn. It angers him, and he snaps each leg off the deer. Shuggie leaves with his can of dented salmon and walks to meet Leanne. The narrator comments on how Shuggie had sat with Agnes’s body for two days before phoning Leek to tell him. Leek came north and organized the cremation. Big Shug didn’t attend, and Shuggie felt stupid for having packed a bag of clean clothes. Jinty had been angry that there was no alcohol at the wake. No one seemed sad Agnes was dead.
Shuggie, in the present, leans against the bus window and thinks about how he doesn’t want to think about the funeral anymore. He thinks about the call he’ll make to Leek later, when he’ll ask about the new baby but not about art school; how he’ll lie to Leek by saying he is doing fine. Shuggie gets off at the Central Station and buys four ruby heart tarts at a bakery. He meets Leanne at Paddy’s Market. Before they find something to do, Leanne wants to check on her mother. They sit on some grass and eat tarts until Shuggie hears Moira laughing and trying to convince a man to go with her. Leanne gets her mother to change out of her underwear and into the new pair she has brought. Leanne gives her apple sauce and other food to eat, including the cans of salmon Shuggie brought for her.
Moira is hostile toward Shuggie, making fun of his accent and practiced manners. He tells her Leanne loves her and asks why she has to get in such a state. Moira says she likes to take a drink. Moira says it’s dole day, and she wants to get to the men before they spend all their money. With that she leaves, and Leanne says she’ll find her again. Moira doesn’t thank her before walking off and launching the bag of salmon at another sex worker. Leanne tells Shuggie not to say more disapproving things. Shuggie says he won’t. They discuss what to do. Leanne mentions a boy who was making eyes at Shuggie. Shuggie says he was thinking maybe they could go dancing. Leanne is shocked and says she can’t imagine him dancing in his poncy school shoes. Shuggie tuts, nods his head, and spins on his heels flamboyantly.
Analysis
To become “brand new,” as Agnes suggested, Shuggie begins his new life in the East End by trying to memorize the little book of football match results Eugene gave him. Shuggie hopes that pretending to have an interest in sports will allow him to pass in society as “normal.” Maybe if he seems like every other Scottish boy, people will stop bullying him and shouting homophobic slurs.
Shuggie and Agnes’s hopes of being brand new are dashed quickly, however, when Agnes immediately gets drunk. She humiliates herself and Shuggie by going around to the neighbors to introduce herself while intoxicated. Students at Shuggie’s school immediately pick up on Shuggie’s difference. Just as the other students did in Pithead, they taunt Shuggie for speaking in a posh accent (learned from his mother) and for seeming to be homosexual. Although they have moved, alcoholism and homophobia still haunt them.
Accompanying his neighbor Keir on a double date, Shuggie meets Leanne. Also the child of an alcoholic, Leanne casually speaks of the extreme lows her mother has reached. Shuggie finds himself able to relate to Leanne in a way he hasn’t been able to relate to other children. He feels comfortable admitting that Agnes tried to commit suicide again the night before. Leanne mentions an offshoot of AA for children of alcoholics. At Alateen (Adult Children of Alcoholics), Leanne felt alienated by the comparatively less severe parental alcoholism other teens shared about, in part because the other children were posh and not poor working class like Leanne’s family. Unlike Shuggie, Leanne has accepted her powerlessness over her mother’s drive to kill herself. She believes there is nothing they can do to help alcoholics, all of whom are on the slow road to death.
The air of hopelessness continues as Shuggie grows older. One day he and Agnes get into an argument after she spends their money on bingo and drinking instead of food. She kicks him out, sending him to Leek’s apartment. In a desperate moment that encapsulates how Shuggie has come to navigate his poverty, he offers to let the cab driver sexually touch him instead of payment. The offer shocks the driver, who takes pity on Shuggie and lets him out. Having moved away from the family and the belief that he could rescue her, Leek is visibly less troubled than he used to be. Leek advises Shuggie that Agnes will never get better. He believes it is only a matter of time before Agnes’s alcoholism will put her on the street.
Leek’s and Leanne’s prophetic announcements come true when Agnes binge drinks until she chokes on her own vomit. Shuggie stands by her, poised to help as he usually does, but he doesn’t intervene, believing that Leek may have been right: he cannot save her from herself. As an act of mercy, Shuggie lets Agnes die, something she has been trying to do for years.
Stuart ends the novel with a return to 1992, continuing where the opening section left off. Shuggie leaves his bedsit with a bag of canned salmon to bring to Leanne’s mother, an alcoholic woman who lives on the street and engages in sex work. On the bus, Shuggie remembers how Agnes’s funeral was attended by people who loathed Agnes when she was alive and who were not sad when she died.
In the present, Shuggie gets off the bus and picks up tarts from a bakery before meeting his friend Leanne. After a picnic, Leanne and Shuggie find Leanne’s mother, Moira, on the street. Drunk, defiant, verbally abusive, and shameless, Moira raises Shuggie’s hackles. He judges her for not seeming to care how “low” she has become or that her daughter is worried about her. To Shuggie, Moira stands as an example of what Agnes might have become had she not died at home with some small measure of dignity intact. Ending on a note of compromised optimism, Leanne and Shuggie walk away from Moira discussing whether they should go dancing. In an act that shows some of Agnes’s fun-loving spirit lives on in Shuggie, Shuggie spins on his heels to show Leanne he certainly can dance. With this closing image, Stuart suggests that Shuggie, after the alcoholism and abandonment he has witnessed and endured, is ready to begin his own recovery from the effects of growing up in dysfunction.
