Last year, Douglas Stuart was awarded the Booker Prize for Shuggie Bain, a story about a boy, Shuggie, who spends his childhood taking care of his alcoholic mother, Agnes, in Glasgow’s public housing. This year, Irish author, Lisa Harding, writes about a single mother, Sonya Moriarty, an alcoholic who can barely take care of her young son, Tommy, and their dog in their cramped and disheveled home in Dublin. If you liked Shuggie Bain, you will adore Bright Burning Things for many reasons, specifically for the trenchant portrayal of alcoholism and the havoc it can wreak:
“My stomach is raw and distended. Run my hands across my belly and imagine an alien life form in there, eating me from the inside out. Some otherworldly force has made its headquarters inside me and is issuing instructions. I am powerless to resist.”
These scenes of verisimilitude invite readers to empathize with Sonya, a failed actress and an unfit mother whose mind and body are entrapped in the vice grip of alcoholism, which includes blackouts:
“Yaya? Yaya? Tommy’s voice tugs at the edge of my consciousness as I rock, clutching my stomach, sweat pouring out of me. He’s blowing on my face and Herbie’s big tongue is licking me. Tommy is pinching the skin on the back of my hand. Yaya, wake up, wake up.”
On another occasion, Tommy and Herbie run away but Sonya is unaware of their absence until hours later. Her unconditional love for Tommy, however, is not in question: “My love for Tommy is bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before.” But her love is not enough; it is her ability to care for her four-year old son that is in question. Harding points this out when Sonya’s father reunites with her after a two-year absence: “There’s nothing there [in the cupboards or in the refrigerator].” And her house is unkempt: “A rat would have a party in here” making it plausible that the environment itself could cause Sonya to lose Tommy forever: Sonya has one chance. One last chance to keep her son. And that chance is for her to commit to a three-month stint in a drying-out center.
After mounting some resistance, she agrees to go. But before she departs, Tommy is placed in social services and Herbie is placed with a family where he will sleep in a dark kennel. The reader cries with Sonya: “Yaya? Yes, darling. Don’t let the bad fairy fly inside tonight, please, Yaya. I won’t, darling, I promise. No more bottle.”
Harding’s familiarity with a rehab facility and the detoxification process is poignantly evident through her spare, candid language from the moment Sonya passed through the rehab’s gates: “The building in front of us is large and grey, institutional. An oversized statue of the Virgin Mary in a grotto looms in the neat, ordered gardens.” Before it serviced the addicted, the location was a “sanatorium, the madhouse where they used to lock up wild women in this country not so long ago.” The initial withdrawal triggers Sonya’s hypothalamus — “what will happen to the winged creatures without my daily dose of anaesthesia?” The doctors prescribe Librium to quell her cravings, but she doesn’t take the pills, and “the sweats are bad, the spasms weird, the sensation of spinning sickening, the dreams (hallucinations?) too vivid, too intense.”
Her only motivation to improve is Tommy. Harding’s keen understanding of the disease is further portrayed during Sonya’s drying-out period: “My eyes wander, taking in the yellow-stained, pockmarked walls, the linoleum floor, synthetic and shiny, seemingly moving beneath my feet.” In addition, she is constantly nauseous and her tongue swells. But three activities give her hope: tending to the chickens, cuddling the kittens, and whittling in woodwork class: “Woodwork class is a revelation, another sort of balm.” And she relates to Big Jimmy, an ex-con who also works with the kittens: “I feel like I’m in the presence of someone like me … his extreme emotions, and this: his maudlin love for animals.” Big Jimmy provides tips for recovery during her separation from Tommy before Harding pulls out a chair for the reader to experience a painful group therapy session:
“People look vulnerable, on their knees, chanting words they probably don’t even understand. They are all like oversized children. A tenderness settles in my body, lifting me out of myself for one blessed moment. One man in his fifties tells of shooting up with his mother when he was eleven; another, aged eight, watched his father throw himself into the canal on his fortieth birthday.”
After three months of group sessions, talks with Big Jimmy, and conversations with Sister Anne, who comforted Sonya, Sonya is released, but she is petrified: “Don’t look back, don’t look back. All I want to do is run back to Sister Anne and beg to be reinstated in my nylon bedroom.” But Sonya believes that a reunion with Tommy and Herbie will be the panacea to her alcoholism. Not so fast. During the first few weeks, Sonya is granted only day visits because she has to prove to the social worker that she can handle being a responsible mother. Harding’s language again captures Sonya’s battle with the menacing disease:
“My heart is pounding so loudly I’m sure others can hear it. Unscrew the top of bottle numero uno … sniff, tentatively sip, inhale. Funny how little resistance there is, how my mind is not at war.”
This relapse occurs before Sonya is granted full custody of Tommy — but then she is ensnared in a relationship with the unlikeable David Smythe, a friend and fellow AAer. After a few day visits and that relapse, Tommy moves back home, but David’s selfishness may hinder Sonya’s recovery. Sonya understands that Tommy will be placed into the system for good if she does not create boundaries with David.
Harding’s depiction of an alcoholic’s path to recovery is exceptional in its psychological acuity. She depicts Sonya struggling desperately with sorrow and addiction for much of the novel, drawing the reader into a vortex of helplessness. I was particularly struck by the moving scenes of an alcoholic’s physical and mental pain inside a long-term detox center, illuminating just how tough it is for an alcoholic to change their behavior. For an eclectic reading of alcohol-laden books, read Shuggie Bain, Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, and Bright Burning Things.
[Published by HarperVia on December 7, 2021, 321 pages, $26.99 hardcover]