‘The wine tasted nothing like sunshine’: the unreliable future textual possible worlds of alcohol addiction in Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain

Abstract

Drawing on Possible Worlds Theory (PWT), this paper examines how Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (2020) stylistically and narratively constructs alcohol addiction through shifting configurations of textual actuality and possibility. Applying a temporally framed PWT approach, I analyse how the novel projects positive future possibilities in the form of Future Textual Possible Worlds (FTPWs) centred on alcohol that are repeatedly destabilised and overwritten by less favourable actualities. I propose the concept of unreliable FTPWs to describe future-orientated constructions which invite readers to doubt their viability at the point of their emergence. Using stylistic analysis, I show how unreliable FTPWs are constructed throughout the narrative, producing a progressive narrowing of attainable futures. This approach demonstrates the value of a temporally orientated PWT approach for stylistics and helps to account for Shuggie Bain’s emotional impact by explaining how the novel repeatedly opens, destabilises and withdraws future worlds associated with alcohol addiction.