Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart's debut novel follows Hugh Bain, known as Shuggie, the youngest of three children, through a childhood in run-down public housing in 1980s Glasgow, where Thatcher's policies have put men out of work. His mother, Agnes, keeps up a glamorous image, often likened to Elizabeth Taylor, and longs for a home with a front door of its own, but she takes increasing solace in drink. Her husband, a taxi driver, is unfaithful. Shuggie, picked on for being different, longs to be a normal boy. Stuart wrote it over a decade, and at least 30 publishers turned it down before Grove Atlantic bought it. It won the 2020 Booker Prize, and its dialogue is written in Scots.

Dua Lipa picked it for her Service95 Book Club in June 2023.