![]() ![]() Like Shuggie, Stuart’s mother died from alcoholism when he was 16, but he is at pains to stress that this is a work of fiction: “It dwarfs and eclipses what any seven-year-old boy could go through.” Poverty, misogyny, homophobia, addiction and sectarianism are all touched upon but, above all, this is a love story between a mother and her son. “We are watching The Crown right now, and Margaret Thatcher and the government feel like very forthright, powerful people who are making things happen.” Fear and determination drove him on to finish high school while living on his own in a hostel after his mother’s death “No one here had any idea what Thatcher did,” he says. The American publisher to which he first sent the manuscript was worried about finding a readership for a book about 1980s Scotland. ![]() The novel took him 10 years to write and was rejected by 32 publishers. ![]()
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