'Shuggie Bain' Will Lift You Up — And Tear You Up

Shuggie Bain is a novel that cracks open the human heart, brings you inside, tears you up, and brings you up, with its episodes of unvarnished love, loss, survival and sorrow.

It's the story of a little boy, Shuggie Bain, growing up in rough circumstances in the Glasgow of the 1980s, rife with families living under the strain of joblessness and depression, who sometimes deal with it in the worst ways. Shuggie himself lives with his taxi driver father Big Shug and his troubled mother, Agnes.