Ruthlessness is back as the standout read takes the title

‘Shuggie Bain will scramble your heart and expand your brain, buy it, read it and weep’

This year’s Booker Prize was unusual – we approached it with suspicion. Last time, it was a shambles. All the judges have to do is pick one outstanding novel. It was thus historic, and tedious, when they failed in 2019. Of their two “joint winners”, one was Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments – a lifetime-achievement award in disguise – and the other was Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, which was merely, if complexly, bad.

Thirteen months on, you might have feared the worst. So what a relief that, last night, the Booker regained its ruthlessness, and sense. Douglas Stuart deserves the £50,000. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, was the standout book of the year.

Only his second published work, it drew on Stuart’s own Eighties youth.

A little boy in Glasgow’s filthy tenements, he’s beset by his mother, an alcoholic, and his burgeoning sexuality. It’s a searing story of Special Brew and vomit at dawn, and the steadfastness of a child’s love. Few novelists can write a woman like Agnes – wretched enough to break your heart, but with a drunk’s grim selfishness. Built on this harrowing portrait, Shuggie Bain has excoriating power.

Of the six novels on the shortlist, four were debuts, and none of the novelists was a “household name”.

Good – the purpose of the Booker is to broaden the public’s taste. There were, as usual, superficial complaints and Stuart was the only Briton shortlisted. But the list was the strongest for years: this time, quality has won out.

The absent giant, if you believe the headlines, was Dame Hilary Mantel: with The Mirror and the Light, her Cromwell trilogy might have won three Prizes from three. But that decision was right – the novel was prolix, and Mantel doesn’t need publicity.

I had a few doubts about the longlist. It left out Actress by Anne Enright, a haunted, heartbroken work – if not quite as rich as The Gathering, for which she won in 2007. Strange, too, was the lack of Ali Smith’s Summer, the end of her “seasonal” quartet.

But these are trivial gripes. With the exception, perhaps, of Diane Cook

– The New Wilderness is a poorlyplotted dystopian tale – I’d recommend any of the final six.

Stuart’s victory is a just reward. There’ll be no champagne flowing in Bloomsbury, but festivities or no, this marks the Booker’s return to form.

Shuggie Bain is an extraordinary novel, which will scramble your heart and expand your mind.

Buy it, read it and weep.