I Started Reading Shuggie Bain

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 I'm not sure how to say this, but I've started reading a book that is good and I'm certain I won't like.

It's a bit of a sad feeling, to be honest. It's not as sad as reading a shitty book all the way through, or a good book with a bad ending, but it does feel bad knowing that I'm going to spend the next 8 or so hours of my life on something that I won't like.

We all know what "Oscar bait" is right? Well, I feel like Shuggie Bain is the oscar bait of literature. Again, I'm barely 10% through it, but I have a good feeling how things are going to go. It tells the story of an orphaned (?) or otherwise unloved teenager, working a low-wage service job where wealthier people look down on him. He's coded as being feminine at the very least so far, and I have a guess that he's going to be gay or transgender, and following that, he'll be sexually abused by someone. I'm guessing an older man.

The story jumps around in time a bit as well, and introduces several characters in and around Shuggie's family. Of course they are poor and living in a bad neighborhood, and of course the father is a cheater, and of course the mother is an alcoholic. That's how these things go, you see.

I'm terrified that I'm going to be reading a book where I can predict what's going to happen, and I don't think that I have some sort of special power or anything. I think if people who enjoy this type of book are honest with themselves, they probably could predict it as well. This type of thing has been seen so many times before.

Artistically speaking, haven't we seen this enough? Don't we know that living in poverty is dangerous and miserable? Don't we know that being gay in the 1990s was harrowing? Is there nothing left to say? It is at times like these that I most appreciate books that are doing something unique and creative, even if they are not written with half as much talent as the author of Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart.

I recently read What Moves the Dead, Dowry of Blood, and Her Body and Other Parties. All three of these books are not capital "M" masterpieces, but they were creative and original. I'd much rather be reading any of those.

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