If you liked
Books like Shuggie Bain
by Douglas Stuart
Shuggie Bain is Douglas Stuart's Booker-winning portrait of a boy in 1980s Glasgow loving his mother through her alcoholism as the city rusts around them. It is tender and brutal in equal measure. If you want more unflinching novels about hard childhoods and fierce love, these are the reads.
The shortlist
What to read next
Young Mungoby Douglas Stuart
“Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart 2022 review. A gay Protestant boy and a Catholic boy fall in love in 1990s sectarian Glasgow. Stuart's Shuggie Bain follow-up.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
Demon Copperheadby Barbara Kingsolver
“Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.”
The Heart's Invisible Furiesby John Boyne
“The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne 2017 review. Cyril Avery's life across seven decades - adopted out of 1945 Catholic Cork, navigating the closeted gay Ireland of the 1960s through the 2010s. Boyne's literary commercial masterwork.”
Crying in H Martby Michelle Zauner
“Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.”
Educatedby Tara Westover
“Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.”
FAQ
Common questions about Shuggie Bain read-alikes
- I want more Douglas Stuart.
- Young Mungo is the one, his second novel, another Glasgow story about a queer working-class boy and a love that the world around him will not allow. Same setting, same aching tenderness. If Shuggie undid you, this will too.
- I want the emotional intensity, wherever it is set.
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is the deep end, a novel about trauma and friendship that pushes further than almost anything. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver moves the hard-childhood story to Appalachia and the opioid crisis, and it took the Pulitzer.
- I want a queer coming-of-age against a hostile world.
- The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne follows a gay man across twentieth-century Ireland with humor and heartbreak. It shares Shuggie Bain's subject and adds a wider, wryer scope.
- I want the loving-a-difficult-parent thread specifically.
- Crying in H Mart and Educated are the memoir picks: Zauner on a mother and grief, Westover on escaping a dangerous family. Both center the same complicated, formative parent bond that drives Shuggie Bain.
The original