Shuggie: As Shuggie gets older we can see how his difference makes him a target. He is still being bullied in school for being “different” and it has turned to physical blows. The first fight we see is with Francis McAvennie and it is stopped by Annie, an older girl. However, he isn’t always saved. We also see him get bullied by teachers who poke fun at him for not wanting to play football. This leads to a huge altercation with a boy called Lachlan McKay who Shuggie didn’t think should be laughing since Lachlan’s dirtier than him. They fight after school, pathetically, and Lachlan only “wins” because of the McAvennie’s help. The bullying doesn’t stop at school, though. One night when Agnes asks Shuggie to dance for her he realizes that their window has been open this entire time and the McAvennie children have been watching and making fun of him. Agnes tells him to keep going though because their taunts only work if Shuggie lets them (a rare instance of good advice from Agnes). The McAvennie’s also make fun of Shuggie for liking the flowers that Agnes planted. When they see him with a handful of petals in his hand, they cruelly remind him that their mother told them to stay away from him because he might do inappropriate things to him. This, though extremely unnecessary from Colleen and wildly inappropriate, gives me the idea that she knows that Agnes and James slept together. Until now, she seemed pretty neutral on Agnes and her children but she is now shaming him in public.

We also see Shuggie struggle with his mother’s sobriety and explains how he’s learned the tells of Agnes. In chapter 18, Shuggie describes how everyday at 3pm he gets nervous to go home as he doesn’t know what is waiting for him there. He despises hearing crying and country music as they predict a bad night. Silence is unpredictable since the last time he trusted silence Agnes tried to kill herself by sticking her head in the oven. He also hated when she put on a polite accent which meant she would be on the phone calling everyone who had ever wronged her. Shuggie refused to count the days of her sobriety this time, afraid that it would all come crashing down around him. He hated the “aunties” and “uncles” who visited because they all brought alcohol with him, and the men only wanted to sleep with Agnes. However, this time she was really doing better. And though Shuggie wanted to celebrate that he couldn’t help but feel resentment. He tried for years to get Agnes better and now it seems that Eugene did it in no time- he expresses that he wishes he could unload all of his problems onto her like she did to him many times before. It’s sad to see how much Agnes really relies on Shuggie, but she doesn’t see how much it effects him. We, the audience, now can see that Shuggie views himself as a somewhat failure for not being able to get his mother sober, a burden no ten year old should have to bear.

When Agnes falls off the wagon, Shuggie is left alone on New Year’s Eve. We see him take a drink and then take the pilgrimage to be with his mother who left him to party. He raids the house for the money he needs and calls a cab. At first, the cabbie seems nice making simple conversation and telling Shuggie about his kid. But things take a turn for the worse when he invites Shuggie to the front and molests him. He stops when Shuggie mentions that his father is a cabbie, but the damage is already done. Shuggie finds his mother under a pile of coats at the party and her tights are ripped to shreds. After this, she continues on her bender. She renews her habit of trading groceries for alcohol and keeping Shuggie out of school. This causes Shuggie to carry on a full parental load of Agnes. Things get worse when Agnes tries to commit suicide which sends Shuggie to his dads. Joanie seems upset at Shuggie’s presence and the kids are significantly older than him which makes him feel even more like an outsider. Shuggie can’t help but to feel like a traitor to his mother in Joanie’s nice house. He also can’t help but realize that this family has all the structure his lacks. The kids are excited to tell Shug about their day and they have a proper sit down meal. It’s heartbreaking to watch Shuggie realize that he is one of Shug’s fourteen children and the limited time he got from his dad was plenty enough.

Also, Eugene gifts Shuggie with a football score book. This is noteworthy as we know that when Shuggie is older he continues to repeat these scores that he’s memorized in a way to seem “normal” to others. It’s interesting to see the origin of this habit. And it was even more interesting to see that when he sees a boy that he (presumably) finds attractive he begins to feel the football book burn into his leg, almost a cruel reminder of his need to conform.

• Annie: Annie is a girl who is older than Shuggie who broke up the fight between him and Francis. She lives in a caravan with her dad who also struggles with alcoholism. She’s nice to Shuggie and says kind things about Agnes as she’s met her before when Agnes came to braid her hair. She also offers to let Shuggie play with her ponies because she can see he’s interested in him. Things go sour when Annie mentions that she’s touched boys in exchange for wine. Shuggie is upset because he is constantly accused of touching boys inappropriately AND he’s heard stories of how Agnes “allows” men to do things in exchange for goods which upsets him more. In the end, he decides to steal two ponies from Annie.

Agnes: These chapters show us a new part of Agnes that I didn’t think we would see: her sober. Chapters 17-27 really exemplify the ups and downs that the kids talk about and highlight how disastrous it can be. We first see Agnes extremely hungover in Chapter 17 and unable to really remember what happened to her last night. As she slowly pieces the night together, she realizes that she was raped by the cab driver who took her home from bingo and she struggles to grapple with that news. Unfortunately, she is bombarded by Jinty who is incessant about only staying for a bit, but ends up staying the whole day and causing Agnes to feel even worse by the time Shuggie gets home from school. Later we learn that Agnes starts going to AA again. She picks a place where she knows it will certainly be anonymous instead of other places where faces had become familiar to her. One thing I found interesting was her hesitation while sharing. Peter, the group leader, asks every newcomer to share and when Agnes gets up to share the only thing she can say is “I’m an alcoholic, I guess” which pales in comparison to the others who were willing to share their stories. To me it seems that even though she’s there, she’s still not willing to admit she has a problem just yet. But she actually manages to turn her life around. She gets a job at the petrol station for the night shift where she often runs into the cabbies. They all sit with her and make conversation because she’s so beautiful, but she doesn’t mind because it helps her feels less lonely. She attributes the job with helping her stay off the drink as she isn’t home to sit around and think about everything she isn’t doing. However, here is where she meets Eugene. First, he comes off as really standoffish which strikes Agnes as odd since all of the cabbies love talking to her. She then starts to take his silence as rejection which makes her want to drink. Finally, after some back and forth about bread she breaks through and they manage to get a date going. Things seem to be good at first, but it all takes a turn for the worst. With Agnes off the wagon, things seem worse than ever. She leaves Shuggie at home for New Year’s (a stark contrast to the holidays of last year where there was food on the table and presents under the tree). She even starts up her old habits of calling the taxi company, but this time for Eugene. When Shuggie finds her, her clothes are torn suggesting she has once again been taken advantage of. This causes her to drink heavily. With her being mostly blackout drunk constantly now, she attempts suicide. After a stay at the hospital, she goes to get Shuggie from Shug and Joanie, causing a massive scene by hurling obscenities and throwing a trashcan through their window. She also kicks Leek out during a particularly bad fight causing Shuggie to be the only child left in the house. Eventually, she decides it’s time for them to move away and she promises Shuggie a better life in the city without the drink.

• Jinty McClinchy: We’ve met Jinty a few times before with the other ladies of the Pit, but this is the first time we really get to know who she is. She’s described as particularly judgmental even though she has a drinking habit of her own. This is what leads her to Agnes’ door after her night at bingo. She tells Agnes “she can’t stay long” but continues to drink more and more of her beer, and even invites over a young man to get him to bring more alcohol. Agnes tells Jinty that she had been raped last night, and Jinty makes a show of saying that it’s extremely unfortunate and that things like that would never happen in her day. However, once Lamby shows up she makes light of Agnes’ rape telling Lamby that she can’t stay away from cabbies. Though Agnes calls her a filthy backstabber she still comes over. She has Shuggie rub her feet and on one occasion she suggests that he goes to the “special school” with her daughter, Louise, whom she only put in there because she’s painfully shy. At this suggestion, Shuggie promptly breaks her toe.
• Eugene McNamara: Though perhaps unintentional, Eugene is the reason that Agnes breaks her sobriety after a year. He is the eldest brother to Colleen McAvennie (which is a problem for Agnes already) and he is a widower. He tells Agnes that after seeing her he wanted to try again, and she falls for him as he is kind and he doesn’t seem like the other guys she’s been with. However, Eugene can’t get past the fact that she suffers with alcoholism. After attending her one year sober “birthday party” he freaks out and starts to ice her out. Agnes believes this to be a breakup which she takes in stride, but Eugene explains to her that he actually really likes her he just can’t wrap his head around her being like them (the other people at the party). Which Agnes tells him that she is them and even though she’s good right now there’s always the possibility that she’ll slip. Eugene apparently disregards this, though, because at a fancy dinner he pushes her to have a glass of wine since it’s the “normal” thing to do. He doesn’t understand that it just isn’t something she can do and with all of his pushing she breaks and has the glass of wine and then multiple vodka sodas. They try to have sex in his cab but it’s said to be unsuccessful. Something about this interaction (him pushing her to drink and then them having sex) really doesn’t sit right with me. It’s actually something Agnes calls out, but he insists he isn’t trying to get her drunk just to have sex he just wants her to be “normal”. Either way, when he brings her home drunk Leek punches him over and over again taking his frustration out on Eugene. After this, Eugene is only around when Leek isn’t and he begins to see just how bad Agnes’ problem can get. He sticks around for a bit- being there at the hospital after her suicide attempt and managing a schedule with her so he only sees her when she’s gotten the alcohol of last night out of her system. He ends the relationship, though, when Agnes starts making plans for the future and he realizes he can’t tolerate her like this.

Shug: After three years of not seeing his own son, he stops by when he realizes that Agnes hasn’t been calling the taxi service drunk and that it will soon be Shuggie’s 11th birthday (this he only uses as an excuse to see Agnes, though, not as an opportunity to prove that he is a competent father). He shows up in Pithead with football cleats that don’t even fit Shuggie properly and a pack of beer for Agnes. At first it’s insinuated that Shug and Agnes had sex and she will eventually break her sobriety, but we learn that Agnes tells Shug that he isn’t wanted there anymore. We also learn that he still sees Agnes as the love of his life which seems especially cruel with how he wields it and how he treated her when they were together. I don’t doubt that Shug loves Agnes, but he has an awful way of showing it. He becomes more arrogant when he has Shuggie staying with him- another show of how Shug and Agnes use Shuggie for their own personal gain. However, he does something really interesting when Agnes shows up at his house. He doesn’t block anything coming towards Joanie, but he tries his hardest to make sure no one touches Agnes. Also, I know that part of Shug keeping Shuggie is for his own personal gain but something about him telling Agnes that she can’t look after Shuggie since she can’t even look after herself made me feel like in some ways he does kind of care about what Agnes is doing to her children. It’s just a shame most of the time he’s only doing things to piss her off.

Leek: We don’t see much of Leek in these chapters, but he does have some big moments. For the first time, we are able to see Leek as a kid who loves being home when his mother is sober and attentive to him. And we get to see the disappointment as Eugene unintentionally pushes her off of the wagon. We get to see hints of him wanting to stay and it’s all taken back once Agnes gets bad again. In fact, she kicks him out when she thinks him to be ungrateful for everything she does for him. This seems like the last time we’ll see Leek and it’s unfortunate because in that moment we learn how much he truly does for his mom and for Shuggie.

Catherine: What we learn about Catherine is only from her stepfather Shug since she is still refusing to talk to Agnes. After moving to South Africa for her husband, Donald Jr’s, new job she is pregnant and her mother-in-law will be coming over to help her out around the house. The news is devastating to Agnes as it proves how much Catherine does not want her to be a part of her life.

Things I Liked:

• Seeing the AA meeting. There were a lot of great quotes in there like Peter saying, “…I am in flames, yet I do not burn… That’s what Saint Agnes had to teach us. How even in darkness there is still hope” and the old woman remarking to Agnes, “The bastards couldnae burn Saint Agnes, so they beheaded the poor lassie instead. Fuckin’ men! Eh?”
• I liked that the book highlighted that it’s not always just the kids who are the bullies, but the adults too
• Finally being able to see the similarities between Agnes and Shuggie. I knew they would be somewhat similar because they’re related and they spend a lot of time together, but seeing that they really do struggle with the same thing makes this novel more personal. Both mother and son, no matter what they do, can’t seem to conform to what others want them to be
• Seeing Agnes telling Shug to go away

Things I Didn’t Like:

• Eugene
• “Sometimes you don’t even want a thing. You just can’t bear anyone else to have it”