The Nature of Things

 Imagine how all of those publishing houses that rejected Douglas Stuart's debut novel must have felt after Grove Press finally took a flyer on it, published it, and subsequently it was nominated for practically every literary award in the world. A bit chagrined I would imagine. And now the book has won perhaps the most prestigious of those awards, the Booker Prize for Fiction. All the accolades are well-deserved in my opinion. It is an amazing work of art.   The action of the novel takes place in the 1980s and 1990s in Glasgow. It is the coming-of-age story of young Hugh (Shuggie) Bain. The child Shuggie lives with his parents and older step-brother and step-sister and for a while with his maternal grandparents as well. But that doesn't last long. The father moves his family out to a council house in a poor neighborhood and then he abandons them. The sister marries and moves to South Africa. The brother stays on for a few years but then his mother tosses him out and Shug...