A novel of unrelenting pain - more than I for one can bear

 OK I gave it all I could and I tip my hat to Douglas Stuart for his extraordinary writing in his much-praised debut novel, Shuggie Bain - a book w/ so many strong points - terrific even horrifying descriptions of working-class living conditions, addictions, idiosyncratic phrasings, familiar tensions and rivalries in the Thatcher era of the closing of the mines and much unemployment in a system that provided little to nothing in support for the down and oppressed - but by about the mid-point of this novel I just cannot take more of the bleakness, the violence, the misery of the characters: addicted mother, absent and spiteful father, mockery and bullying of the young, effeminate eponymous Shuggie. The novel hits the same notes again and again, driving home its message of course and seemingly a perfectly accurate account of a family in a time and place of hardship, but how much must a reader endure w/out a sign of light or life? It's more than I can give this painful book.