Scottish author Douglas Stuart has expressed his concern over the decline in reading among adults, suggesting that men have decided that “fiction isn’t for them”.
The bestselling writer behind Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, whose third novel John of John was released last month, often explores themes of masculinity, class and sexuality in his work.
Having initially been worried about literacy rates among working-class men, whom Stuart said had historically felt excluded by literature, he is now worried that men in general have turned away from reading fiction.
“How do you fix that?” he asked during an interview with the i Paper. “I don’t know. If it goes on too long, we’ll all feel the societal effects. We’re going to end up with more people in power who lack empathy and that hurts all of us.”
Alarm has been raised repeatedly over declining literacy rates, and a study in 2024 revealed half of UK adults no longer read regularly, while 15 per cent of UK adults have never read regularly for pleasure.
The issue has been blamed on causes such as decreasing attention spans due to our time spent on social media, or not having enough time to fit reading into our busy schedules.
In March this year, children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce warned that children who arrive at school without having been read to at home are starting their education as “second-class citizens”.
Close to 50 per cent of children are believed to arrive at school without having been read to, highlighting a growing disconnect between young people and traditional reading.
In the same interview, Stuart said he felt uneasy about the responsibility of representation through his work as a queer, working-class Scottish novelist, and hadn’t been prepared for the sudden attention that Shuggie Bain – which won the Booker Prize in 2020 – brought.
“I only wanted to write novels. I’m not looking to have an argument or to sort the world or to fix anything,” the former fashion designer said. “I’m trying to describe something on paper that we tend to overlook.”
He said he feels “an enormous amount of guilt. I represent a lot of things that people don’t often see in literature and I just feel like I’m always doing it poorly as a public figure.”
