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Young Mungo
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2022)Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds.
As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
390 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2022
About the author
Douglas Stuart
14 books4,162 followersDouglas Stuart is a Scottish - American author. His work has been translated into 40 languages. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, is the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize. His second novel, Young Mungo, was a #1 Sunday Times Bestseller. His short stories have been published by The New Yorker.
Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, after receiving his MA from the Royal College of Art in London, he has lived and worked in New York City.
Follow him on instagram at Douglas_Stuart or Twitter at Doug_D_Stuart
Born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, after receiving his MA from the Royal College of Art in London, he has lived and worked in New York City.
Follow him on instagram at Douglas_Stuart or Twitter at Doug_D_Stuart
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 8,404 reviews
January 9, 2023
If only I could, I would give this many more than 5 stars - heartbreaking, breathtaking and very memorable.
Shuggie Bain, Stuart's Booker winning (and SHOULD have been NBA winning. over the definitely inferior Interior Chinatown) debut novel, was my favorite book of 2020, and unless I read something truly astonishing in the next 5 days, his second book is destined to appropriately be my favorite book of this rather bleak year.
Some have criticized the book for being a somewhat pale imitation of the earlier novel, since it does retread some of the same ground: working class Glascow milieu, an awkward queer teenage titular character, an alcoholic mother who comes dangerously close to hijacking the book for herself - even the makeup of the family unit, with three children composed of a violent older brother, a thoughtful middle sister, and the shy younger son is evident - but I heartily disagree.
Because this is also ultimately a very different kettle of fish, with the heart of it being a tender and evocative love story between the two teen boys, and I think shows a maturing of both Stuart's prose style AND his plotting/characterizations. In particular, I was impressed with how 'alive' even very minor characters become under his sure hand: Poor-Wee-Chrissie; Mo-Maw's swain, Jocky; Mrs. Callahan; Mr. Jamieson; Every-Other-Wednesday Nora; even the driver Calum who picks up the hitchhiking Mungo in the penultimate chapter, and the unnamed woman who runs the store at the loch, are specific and unique. And who cares if Stuart sticks to what he knows best? .... many authors seem to rewrite the same book over and over and when his work is as impressively immersive as Stuart's, I say bring on MORE of the same.
I also enjoyed the structure and how well Stuart navigates between the two timeframes, bringing them beautifully together for a final chapter that is nothing less than devastating, yet hopeful. I am not ashamed to admit that tears were shed.
Both this and Shuggie could very well stand having sequels written, and it's a sign of a great book that the author leaves you wanting MORE of his characters, and eager to find out the next chapters in their lives - they are that real to the reader. If the quality of Stuart's writing continues to be of this high caliber, he going to have to make room for more awards on his trophy shelf - I would be amazed if this doesn't garner at LEAST another Booker nomination, and perhaps even take the crown again in 2022. I also predict it will be a smashing critical and popular success when it is published in late April
My heartfelt thanks to LM, Netgalley, and Grove Atlantic for the ARC in exchange for this honest and VERY enthusiastic review.
Shuggie Bain, Stuart's Booker winning (and SHOULD have been NBA winning. over the definitely inferior Interior Chinatown) debut novel, was my favorite book of 2020, and unless I read something truly astonishing in the next 5 days, his second book is destined to appropriately be my favorite book of this rather bleak year.
Some have criticized the book for being a somewhat pale imitation of the earlier novel, since it does retread some of the same ground: working class Glascow milieu, an awkward queer teenage titular character, an alcoholic mother who comes dangerously close to hijacking the book for herself - even the makeup of the family unit, with three children composed of a violent older brother, a thoughtful middle sister, and the shy younger son is evident - but I heartily disagree.
Because this is also ultimately a very different kettle of fish, with the heart of it being a tender and evocative love story between the two teen boys, and I think shows a maturing of both Stuart's prose style AND his plotting/characterizations. In particular, I was impressed with how 'alive' even very minor characters become under his sure hand: Poor-Wee-Chrissie; Mo-Maw's swain, Jocky; Mrs. Callahan; Mr. Jamieson; Every-Other-Wednesday Nora; even the driver Calum who picks up the hitchhiking Mungo in the penultimate chapter, and the unnamed woman who runs the store at the loch, are specific and unique. And who cares if Stuart sticks to what he knows best? .... many authors seem to rewrite the same book over and over and when his work is as impressively immersive as Stuart's, I say bring on MORE of the same.
I also enjoyed the structure and how well Stuart navigates between the two timeframes, bringing them beautifully together for a final chapter that is nothing less than devastating, yet hopeful. I am not ashamed to admit that tears were shed.
Both this and Shuggie could very well stand having sequels written, and it's a sign of a great book that the author leaves you wanting MORE of his characters, and eager to find out the next chapters in their lives - they are that real to the reader. If the quality of Stuart's writing continues to be of this high caliber, he going to have to make room for more awards on his trophy shelf - I would be amazed if this doesn't garner at LEAST another Booker nomination, and perhaps even take the crown again in 2022. I also predict it will be a smashing critical and popular success when it is published in late April
My heartfelt thanks to LM, Netgalley, and Grove Atlantic for the ARC in exchange for this honest and VERY enthusiastic review.
April 18, 2022
this gave me ‘a little life’ vibes in the sense that this story is about suffering, violence, and the dangers of love.
this didnt quite emotionally wreck me like ‘a little life’ did, which left me feeling sorrowful and empty. this story is leaving me feeling angry and provoked instead.
which has me conflicted. because this book is dedicated to “all the gentle sons of glasgow,” and yet, all this shows is how that gentleness will be punished and abused. there is some really tough content to get through in this.
this is undoubtably a very raw story, one that is equal parts captivating and horrific, but i think it will take a certain kind of reader to see that kind of brutal honestly and value it.
↠ 4 stars
this didnt quite emotionally wreck me like ‘a little life’ did, which left me feeling sorrowful and empty. this story is leaving me feeling angry and provoked instead.
which has me conflicted. because this book is dedicated to “all the gentle sons of glasgow,” and yet, all this shows is how that gentleness will be punished and abused. there is some really tough content to get through in this.
this is undoubtably a very raw story, one that is equal parts captivating and horrific, but i think it will take a certain kind of reader to see that kind of brutal honestly and value it.
↠ 4 stars
September 29, 2023
Shortlisted for the 2023 Polari Prize
Note mild spoilers in review
The author of the magnificent “Shuggie Bain” does it again.
I read “Shuggie Bain” in early mid July 2020 and immediately called it as the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize (around a week before even the longlist was announced) – a prediction which was fulfilled. The summary of my review (a tweet of which the BBC featured on their live page minutes after the winner announcement) was that it was a “desperately moving, heartbreaking book: one which places hope and despair, love and brokenness on the same page, treating them with equal weight and empathy.”
This is the author’s second book, one largely written, if not fully completed, at the time of “Shuggie Bain's" success (although at the time it was under the working title “Loch Awe”) – and if anything my quote is even truer of this novel which is both at times lighter but also in places much darker than its predecessor and which also reads very much as one cut from the same literary cloth.
At that time this book was described by some interviewers as a same-sex take on Romeo and Juliet – a tale of love across a sectarian and territorial gang divide (which I have to say sounded like a “West Side Story” and made my worried about its originality) but was I think better described by the author as being about “the pressure we put on working-class boys to ‘man-up’ and all the terrible things and violence that can flow from that.”.
Or to use my phrase I would say it is about the insidious toxicity of masculinity, particularly when amplified by societal deprivation.
The main protagonist is the fifteen year old Mungo Hamilton, son of a largely absent alcoholic single-mother (herself still under 35) and largely bought up by his older sister Jodie (now 17) in a Glasgow housing scheme. While Jodie is both well liked and studious, the two year older Hamish (Ha-Ha), despite his short stature and “speccy” appearance is a widely feared gang leader, head of a Protestant group of Billy Boys who engage both in crime and in brutal fights against the neighbouring Catholic gang from the next settlement – the Royston Bhoys.
Mungo remains fiercely and tenderly loyal to his mother – Mo-Maw (short for Monday-Thursday Maureen: her Alcoholics Anonymous identification): his two siblings, particularly the scathing Jodie, having long given up on her – and this is a drain on his life as well as check on his future.
But in a fiercely violent masculine and heterosexual working class world, one ironically made only the fiercer and more violent by the otherwise emasculating impact of the Thatcher-era cuts on the heavy industry that built the culture: Mungo’s even bigger struggle is to somehow conform to the conventions and expectations of others (not the least Ha-Ha), when he himself is sensitive, artistic, nervous (with a facial tic which may be Tourette’s and a number of other compulsive behaviours) and increasingly aware of his attraction to his own sex.
At one late stage Mungo lists the disappointment of others and what they have called him “Idiot. Weakling. Liar. Poofter. Coward. Pimp. Bigot” – all the more heartbreaking as coming in many cases from those closest to him.
Then he meets James Jamieson – a slightly older Catholic boy whose flat backs on to his but who he first meets on a waste ground where Jamie has a doocot (a pigeon shed). Jamie recently lost his mother and now effectively lives alone for much of his time as his father is an offshore rig worker and spends his spare time doe-fleein (the lure-ing of other doe-fleers pigeons away through sexual attraction forming an understated metaphor for the whole novel).
Jamie too is attracted to boys – something his father found out (due to Jamie’s naïve use of an early chatline) and is now under firm instructions to find a girl and is planning to stall his father for as long as it takes to hit sixteen and escape with money he has stashed in some videocassettes which look like bound books (note that these are a lovely biographical touch – Douglas Stuart has revealed in interviews that the “closest things to books were shelves of vinyl mock-ups of classic books that were actually video cases”).
Mungo and Jamie fall for each other, despite what they know will be the reaction of their families (particularly Mungo’s brother and Jamie’s Dad) – reactions coloured by both sectarianism and anti-homosexuality.
The book plays out in two halves. The first set over a number of months is Mungo’s life in the period up to, during and after his relationship with James. The second a few months later is the aftermath, the book opening with Mo-Maw sending him on a rather hastily arranged fishing and camping trip to a remote Scottish loch with two men she knows from AA (Gallowgate and St (Sunday-Thursday) Christopher) – the two having proposed it as a way to man-up Mungo – the trip itself forming the second narrative strand.
---------------------------------------------
What I thought was interesting was to discuss where the book is both similar to and different from “Shuggie Bain”.
The largest similarity is in the basic family unit. An alcoholic mother; an absent father (even if the absence here is more permanent); three children (two boys and a girl); the titular character the younger son (and one devoted to his mother despite all the evidence of the futility of helping her); the middle child (Leckie and Jodie) being the studious member of the family (as well as being very sensitively portrayed by Douglas Stuart – who clearly has a liking for the put-upon middle sibling).
The mother’s although ostensibly the same are I think very differently portrayed. Many people have argued that the first book could easily have been called Anges Bain (with Agnes a key protagonist and sympathetically portrayed with her back story and struggles with addiction); I don’t think anyone will argue that this book could have been called Mo-Maw with it very centred around Mungo - partly (see below) due to his older age so that his attentions are turned more outside the splintered family unit.
In terms of geographical setting – both are in of course set in the author’s birth town of Glasgow (albeit "Shuggie Bain" more on the outskirts for much of its time and this having a second strand some way North).
The temporal setting is for me fascinating and important. “Shuggie Bain” was set over the period 1981-1992 with Shuggie from 5-15. No year is specified her but an Auld-Firm reference sets the book firmly in 1992-93 with Mungo approaching 16: so that in both calendar years and ages this book is a sequel to “Shuggie Bain”.
And this ties in to another element – the first book was deliberately almost circular in plot and effectively repetitive in its form: tracing the story of Anges’s many brief recoveries from and longer relapses into alcohol addiction. This by contrast is a much more linear story – tracing not so much the process of accumulation (of alcohol on the family unit, of Thatcher-era heavy-industry decimation on the society) but the sudden impact of that accumulated toxicity (with the toxicity her masculinity as well as alcohol) in a series of dramatic incidents including a vicious gang fight and a series of shocking occurrences.
Both books feature domestic abuse, rape, sexual abuse of minors by those in a position of authority over them - although here (and I think largely reflecting the older age of the point of view character) these are more explicit/graphic.
Religion plays a role in both with interestingly mothers that seem far less concerned at crossing the religious divide than those around them.
Both books have a Saints name and legend at their heart. The legend of St Agnes (and “I am on fire. I do not burn”) forms the basis of an impromptu sermon in “Shuggie Bain” when Agnes first attends AA about how alcoholism consumes everything – something which of course is at the tragic heart of that novel. Here Mungo is explicitly named by his (Protestant) mother after Glasgow’s Patron Saint – and the Saint’s four miracles (featured on the Glasgow crest) “the bird that never flew, the tree that never grew, the bell that never rang, the fish that never swam” are also subtly and brilliantly reversed at key and tragic points in the novel (with pigeons that will never fly again, an attempted conflagration, a man named Bell as well as a phone call with consequences, an aborted fishing trip and series of near drownings).
In terms of cover art this book mirrors the first in both its US and UK covers. The US cover a beautiful piece of family/self portrait which captures a key element of the book but which perhaps captures a little too much of the tenderness of the book and not enough of the rawness of its setting: for "Shuggie Bain" Peter Marlow’s picture of (I think) his wife Fiona and oldest son Max embracing on a comfortable pillow and duvet; here Kyle Thompson beautiful self-portrait of a boy part underwater. The UK covers an iconic piece of photography which to me at least speak more powerfully: Jez Coulser’s striking “Easterhouse” boy on a cross for “Shuggie Bain” and here Wolfgang Tillman’s “The Cock (Kiss)”
But the largest similarity of all is that this is another superbly and clearly patiently crafted piece of writing, with deeply rounded characters, a vivid use of language and many striking and original similes (as well as some subtle use of metaphor). And as a result one which is both engrossing ( I found myself thorough immersed in Mungo’s story just like Shuggie’s, and actually missed the book each time I was away from it) and hugely affecting (with its mix of light and dark).
A key challenge for the author I think will be to show that he can move on in his writing (in his third novel which I believe is to be set in the Hebrides) but for now this is an excellent companion piece to his Booker a prize winning book.
My thanks to Pan MacMillan for an ARC via NetGalley
Note mild spoilers in review
The author of the magnificent “Shuggie Bain” does it again.
I read “Shuggie Bain” in early mid July 2020 and immediately called it as the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize (around a week before even the longlist was announced) – a prediction which was fulfilled. The summary of my review (a tweet of which the BBC featured on their live page minutes after the winner announcement) was that it was a “desperately moving, heartbreaking book: one which places hope and despair, love and brokenness on the same page, treating them with equal weight and empathy.”
This is the author’s second book, one largely written, if not fully completed, at the time of “Shuggie Bain's" success (although at the time it was under the working title “Loch Awe”) – and if anything my quote is even truer of this novel which is both at times lighter but also in places much darker than its predecessor and which also reads very much as one cut from the same literary cloth.
At that time this book was described by some interviewers as a same-sex take on Romeo and Juliet – a tale of love across a sectarian and territorial gang divide (which I have to say sounded like a “West Side Story” and made my worried about its originality) but was I think better described by the author as being about “the pressure we put on working-class boys to ‘man-up’ and all the terrible things and violence that can flow from that.”.
Or to use my phrase I would say it is about the insidious toxicity of masculinity, particularly when amplified by societal deprivation.
The main protagonist is the fifteen year old Mungo Hamilton, son of a largely absent alcoholic single-mother (herself still under 35) and largely bought up by his older sister Jodie (now 17) in a Glasgow housing scheme. While Jodie is both well liked and studious, the two year older Hamish (Ha-Ha), despite his short stature and “speccy” appearance is a widely feared gang leader, head of a Protestant group of Billy Boys who engage both in crime and in brutal fights against the neighbouring Catholic gang from the next settlement – the Royston Bhoys.
Mungo remains fiercely and tenderly loyal to his mother – Mo-Maw (short for Monday-Thursday Maureen: her Alcoholics Anonymous identification): his two siblings, particularly the scathing Jodie, having long given up on her – and this is a drain on his life as well as check on his future.
He was Mo-Maw’s youngest son, but he was also her confidant, her lady’s maid, and errand boy. He was her one flattering mirror, and her teenage diary, her electric blanket, her doormat. He was her best pal, the dog she hardly walked and her greatest romance. He was her cheer on a dreich morning, the only laughter in her audience. …[he] was her mother’s minor moon, her warmest sun, and at the exact same time, a tiny satellite that she had forgotten about. He would orbit her for an eternity, even as she, and then he, broke into bits.
But in a fiercely violent masculine and heterosexual working class world, one ironically made only the fiercer and more violent by the otherwise emasculating impact of the Thatcher-era cuts on the heavy industry that built the culture: Mungo’s even bigger struggle is to somehow conform to the conventions and expectations of others (not the least Ha-Ha), when he himself is sensitive, artistic, nervous (with a facial tic which may be Tourette’s and a number of other compulsive behaviours) and increasingly aware of his attraction to his own sex.
At one late stage Mungo lists the disappointment of others and what they have called him “Idiot. Weakling. Liar. Poofter. Coward. Pimp. Bigot” – all the more heartbreaking as coming in many cases from those closest to him.
Then he meets James Jamieson – a slightly older Catholic boy whose flat backs on to his but who he first meets on a waste ground where Jamie has a doocot (a pigeon shed). Jamie recently lost his mother and now effectively lives alone for much of his time as his father is an offshore rig worker and spends his spare time doe-fleein (the lure-ing of other doe-fleers pigeons away through sexual attraction forming an understated metaphor for the whole novel).
Jamie too is attracted to boys – something his father found out (due to Jamie’s naïve use of an early chatline) and is now under firm instructions to find a girl and is planning to stall his father for as long as it takes to hit sixteen and escape with money he has stashed in some videocassettes which look like bound books (note that these are a lovely biographical touch – Douglas Stuart has revealed in interviews that the “closest things to books were shelves of vinyl mock-ups of classic books that were actually video cases”).
Mungo and Jamie fall for each other, despite what they know will be the reaction of their families (particularly Mungo’s brother and Jamie’s Dad) – reactions coloured by both sectarianism and anti-homosexuality.
The book plays out in two halves. The first set over a number of months is Mungo’s life in the period up to, during and after his relationship with James. The second a few months later is the aftermath, the book opening with Mo-Maw sending him on a rather hastily arranged fishing and camping trip to a remote Scottish loch with two men she knows from AA (Gallowgate and St (Sunday-Thursday) Christopher) – the two having proposed it as a way to man-up Mungo – the trip itself forming the second narrative strand.
---------------------------------------------
What I thought was interesting was to discuss where the book is both similar to and different from “Shuggie Bain”.
The largest similarity is in the basic family unit. An alcoholic mother; an absent father (even if the absence here is more permanent); three children (two boys and a girl); the titular character the younger son (and one devoted to his mother despite all the evidence of the futility of helping her); the middle child (Leckie and Jodie) being the studious member of the family (as well as being very sensitively portrayed by Douglas Stuart – who clearly has a liking for the put-upon middle sibling).
The mother’s although ostensibly the same are I think very differently portrayed. Many people have argued that the first book could easily have been called Anges Bain (with Agnes a key protagonist and sympathetically portrayed with her back story and struggles with addiction); I don’t think anyone will argue that this book could have been called Mo-Maw with it very centred around Mungo - partly (see below) due to his older age so that his attentions are turned more outside the splintered family unit.
In terms of geographical setting – both are in of course set in the author’s birth town of Glasgow (albeit "Shuggie Bain" more on the outskirts for much of its time and this having a second strand some way North).
The temporal setting is for me fascinating and important. “Shuggie Bain” was set over the period 1981-1992 with Shuggie from 5-15. No year is specified her but an Auld-Firm reference sets the book firmly in 1992-93 with Mungo approaching 16: so that in both calendar years and ages this book is a sequel to “Shuggie Bain”.
And this ties in to another element – the first book was deliberately almost circular in plot and effectively repetitive in its form: tracing the story of Anges’s many brief recoveries from and longer relapses into alcohol addiction. This by contrast is a much more linear story – tracing not so much the process of accumulation (of alcohol on the family unit, of Thatcher-era heavy-industry decimation on the society) but the sudden impact of that accumulated toxicity (with the toxicity her masculinity as well as alcohol) in a series of dramatic incidents including a vicious gang fight and a series of shocking occurrences.
Both books feature domestic abuse, rape, sexual abuse of minors by those in a position of authority over them - although here (and I think largely reflecting the older age of the point of view character) these are more explicit/graphic.
Religion plays a role in both with interestingly mothers that seem far less concerned at crossing the religious divide than those around them.
Both books have a Saints name and legend at their heart. The legend of St Agnes (and “I am on fire. I do not burn”) forms the basis of an impromptu sermon in “Shuggie Bain” when Agnes first attends AA about how alcoholism consumes everything – something which of course is at the tragic heart of that novel. Here Mungo is explicitly named by his (Protestant) mother after Glasgow’s Patron Saint – and the Saint’s four miracles (featured on the Glasgow crest) “the bird that never flew, the tree that never grew, the bell that never rang, the fish that never swam” are also subtly and brilliantly reversed at key and tragic points in the novel (with pigeons that will never fly again, an attempted conflagration, a man named Bell as well as a phone call with consequences, an aborted fishing trip and series of near drownings).
In terms of cover art this book mirrors the first in both its US and UK covers. The US cover a beautiful piece of family/self portrait which captures a key element of the book but which perhaps captures a little too much of the tenderness of the book and not enough of the rawness of its setting: for "Shuggie Bain" Peter Marlow’s picture of (I think) his wife Fiona and oldest son Max embracing on a comfortable pillow and duvet; here Kyle Thompson beautiful self-portrait of a boy part underwater. The UK covers an iconic piece of photography which to me at least speak more powerfully: Jez Coulser’s striking “Easterhouse” boy on a cross for “Shuggie Bain” and here Wolfgang Tillman’s “The Cock (Kiss)”
But the largest similarity of all is that this is another superbly and clearly patiently crafted piece of writing, with deeply rounded characters, a vivid use of language and many striking and original similes (as well as some subtle use of metaphor). And as a result one which is both engrossing ( I found myself thorough immersed in Mungo’s story just like Shuggie’s, and actually missed the book each time I was away from it) and hugely affecting (with its mix of light and dark).
A key challenge for the author I think will be to show that he can move on in his writing (in his third novel which I believe is to be set in the Hebrides) but for now this is an excellent companion piece to his Booker a prize winning book.
My thanks to Pan MacMillan for an ARC via NetGalley
December 18, 2022
Young Mungo is Douglas Stuart's return to Glasgow's east end, this time in the immediate aftermath of Thatcherism. With echoes of Shuggie Bain, the main character here is Mungo, a 15-year-old gay teenager, coming of age in an environment where any deviation from a narrowly defined masculinity is perilous. Stuart’s prose is pitch perfect and his exploration of masculinity through the various male characters is nuanced. The violence is searing and raw. I'm often exasperated by novels showing how tragic it is to be a gay man - but that's not how I read this. Were it not for Mungo being a queer teenage boy, he likely would have followed in the footsteps of his brother and remained tethered to the toxic world of his upbringing. As difficult as Mungo's situation is, the understanding that he doesn’t belong is ultimately what gives him the vantage to see his situation for what it is. We see this play out on the closing pages. For Mungo, being a young gay man isn't a tragedy. It is his salvation.
December 25, 2021
Okay, maybe my expectations were too high after Shuggie Bain, but while Stuart still excells at atmospheric writing and nuanced dialogue, the plot is frustratingly predictable and the main character is simply another version of Shuggie, but a bit older, so the aspect of him realizing that he is gay becomes central to the story. Mungo grows up in 1990's Glasgow, the youngest of three siblings with a neglectful, alcoholic single mother whom he feels responsible for. His older brother is a violent criminal, his sister has an affair with a teacher (the outcome of which is exactly what you would expect). Around the siblings, the city and its working class population are still struggling due to de-industrialization, poverty, and hopelessness. When 15-year-old Mungo, a Protestant, falls in love with James, a Catholic, what happens is what you would expect. When his mother sends Mungo to a fishing trip with two pals from the AA so Mungo would man up, what happens is exactly what you would expect (this is no spoiler, this episode starts right at the beginning of the book and is then sprinkled within the chronologically told story of what happened before).
I don't want to make you think that this is a bad book - it's not, and Douglas Stuart is probably incapable of crafting a bad novel, as his talent for psychological writing and scene-setting is just stellar. "Young Mungo" also needs to be applauded for relentlessly depicting the reality of violence against queer people, and the fear that society instills in gay men, the destructive self-hatred it aims to evoke. Douglas does a spectacular job illustrating that, and he also writes impressive scenes of physical intimacy between Mungo and James. Plus to be a fair: Not everything that happens follows a cliched formula, but too much does.
So I have to admit that around 45 % in, when the plot point that I expected from page 2 finally played out, I got really frustrated, and I mean the kind of frustration that sets in when you show up to love something and hype it up, but then you just can't, and it makes you upset. This is all so predicatble and so close to "Shuggie Bain": Shuggie and Mungo are neglected working-class children in a world changed by Thatcherism, their alcoholic mothers aim to re-live the youth they feel they've been cheated out of, Shuggie and Mungo realize they're gay in a hostile, violent environment dominated by toxic masculinity, they want to belong, but they feel responsible for their mothers and are also (understandably) afraid. "Young Mungo" would easily have been a four-star-read, if it wasn't a version of "Shuggie Bain".
There are some great ideas in the book, like naming the protagonist after the patron saint of Glasgow (Saint Kentigern, known as Saint Mungo) who restored a robin to life after his classmates had killed it, and then letting James run a dovecot, and there are also some twists, but argh, this just isn't enough. Strangely, the book reminded me of Hanya Yanagihara, as Stuart pushes Mungo's suffering so far that you deem this Saint Mungo to be a martyr, and it's all a bit much - granted, I loved A Little Life, but this book is so intentionally over the top that it counts an experiment in extreme pychological wriring and you might even debate whether there's a camp aspect to it, which isn't the case in "Young Mungo".
So will I read Stuart's next novel? Absolutely, 100 %, yes. But I hope that he will trust his talent and stray away from the formula that made his debut novel such a success, because he does not need to stick to Shuggie-like characters, he's clearly not a limited writer ike that. His ambition should also be limitless, as Douglas Stuart can deliver. He's got everything it takes to have a long, exceptional career, so why not be bolder in the choices he makes?
I don't want to make you think that this is a bad book - it's not, and Douglas Stuart is probably incapable of crafting a bad novel, as his talent for psychological writing and scene-setting is just stellar. "Young Mungo" also needs to be applauded for relentlessly depicting the reality of violence against queer people, and the fear that society instills in gay men, the destructive self-hatred it aims to evoke. Douglas does a spectacular job illustrating that, and he also writes impressive scenes of physical intimacy between Mungo and James. Plus to be a fair: Not everything that happens follows a cliched formula, but too much does.
So I have to admit that around 45 % in, when the plot point that I expected from page 2 finally played out, I got really frustrated, and I mean the kind of frustration that sets in when you show up to love something and hype it up, but then you just can't, and it makes you upset. This is all so predicatble and so close to "Shuggie Bain": Shuggie and Mungo are neglected working-class children in a world changed by Thatcherism, their alcoholic mothers aim to re-live the youth they feel they've been cheated out of, Shuggie and Mungo realize they're gay in a hostile, violent environment dominated by toxic masculinity, they want to belong, but they feel responsible for their mothers and are also (understandably) afraid. "Young Mungo" would easily have been a four-star-read, if it wasn't a version of "Shuggie Bain".
There are some great ideas in the book, like naming the protagonist after the patron saint of Glasgow (Saint Kentigern, known as Saint Mungo) who restored a robin to life after his classmates had killed it, and then letting James run a dovecot, and there are also some twists, but argh, this just isn't enough. Strangely, the book reminded me of Hanya Yanagihara, as Stuart pushes Mungo's suffering so far that you deem this Saint Mungo to be a martyr, and it's all a bit much - granted, I loved A Little Life, but this book is so intentionally over the top that it counts an experiment in extreme pychological wriring and you might even debate whether there's a camp aspect to it, which isn't the case in "Young Mungo".
So will I read Stuart's next novel? Absolutely, 100 %, yes. But I hope that he will trust his talent and stray away from the formula that made his debut novel such a success, because he does not need to stick to Shuggie-like characters, he's clearly not a limited writer ike that. His ambition should also be limitless, as Douglas Stuart can deliver. He's got everything it takes to have a long, exceptional career, so why not be bolder in the choices he makes?
May 21, 2023
5 "perceptive, powerful, painful, poignant" stars !!!
Tie -The Silver Award Read of 2022 (second favorite read)
A warm thank you to Netgalley, the author and Grove Atlantic for an e-copy. This was released April 2022 and I am providing my honest review.
I do not know how this little review will turn out and I do not wish to censor myself. After finishing this book and crying terribly I grabbed my beloved and asked him to take me out for a long night drive and I listened to slow Arabic love songs and held his hand.
This novel is both intensely intimate and wildly Shakespearean. A family drama, a love story and a coming of age play out in an intensely macho and homophobic Glasgow in the 1980s.
Young Mungo is anxious, needy, sweet, naive and terribly neglected. He is Other and is adrift and friendless until he meets James. The tenderest and sweetest of love unfolds and then...chaos, violence, hurt along with deep care, hope and a yearning for the wider world and connection to nature and beauty.
The prose is vivid and clear and superb. The dialogue zings with authenticity. The psychologies are startingly sound and the sociology unabashedly hyper-realistic. The connection to emotions is genuine and painful and the breath is shallow and hurried.
Truly a magnificent and fierce read that permeated to a very deep level....
With humble thanks to Mr. Douglas Stuart !
Tie -The Silver Award Read of 2022 (second favorite read)
A warm thank you to Netgalley, the author and Grove Atlantic for an e-copy. This was released April 2022 and I am providing my honest review.
I do not know how this little review will turn out and I do not wish to censor myself. After finishing this book and crying terribly I grabbed my beloved and asked him to take me out for a long night drive and I listened to slow Arabic love songs and held his hand.
This novel is both intensely intimate and wildly Shakespearean. A family drama, a love story and a coming of age play out in an intensely macho and homophobic Glasgow in the 1980s.
Young Mungo is anxious, needy, sweet, naive and terribly neglected. He is Other and is adrift and friendless until he meets James. The tenderest and sweetest of love unfolds and then...chaos, violence, hurt along with deep care, hope and a yearning for the wider world and connection to nature and beauty.
The prose is vivid and clear and superb. The dialogue zings with authenticity. The psychologies are startingly sound and the sociology unabashedly hyper-realistic. The connection to emotions is genuine and painful and the breath is shallow and hurried.
Truly a magnificent and fierce read that permeated to a very deep level....
With humble thanks to Mr. Douglas Stuart !
April 25, 2023
4,25-4,5/5 (jeszcze nie jestem pewna)
Mam serce w kawałkach
Mam serce w kawałkach
January 31, 2022
Since finishing this novel, I have been debating how, and when, to review it. Should I wait until my thoughts have percolated a bit more? And what about the issue of trigger warnings, because if there is one book that needs a lurid ‘hazardous to your emotional state’ sticker, this is it. But then any mention of potential triggers to alert sensitive readers will spoil the plot for savvy readers, especially as this is a book that pivots on certain key events.
One elephant in the room I want to get out of the way first: This is not ‘Shuggie Bain 2.0’, even though it features a similar setting and milieu. And an alcoholic mother called Mo-Maw. When Jodie asks her brother Mungo: “What on earth would you know about the ways of men, eh?”, what she should be warning him about are the ways (and wiles) of women.
There is none of the sentiment or accidental empathy here that accrued to the mother figure in ‘Shuggie Bain’, by dint of the reader spending so much time in her sozzled company (hogging the limelight from her son, whose name after all does adorn the cover).
Mo-Maw makes a brief appearance at the beginning when she waves Mungo on his way to a fateful fishing weekend with two complete strangers, and then only reappears again round about 100 pages in. Crucially, she is a truly monstrous figure with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, so the less time we spend in her company, the better.
Critics, armchair and otherwise, have not only been decrying ‘Young Mungo’ as ‘Shuggie Bain’ in a different cagoule, but are already lamenting the poor departed muse of author Douglas Stuart, who seems perpetually fixated on Glasgow.
Bear in mind that this is called ‘Young Mungo’, which clearly signposts the boundaries of the novel’s scope. Equally clear is that the ending is likely to irritate those same readers who were annoyed at how ‘Shuggie Bain’ ended. Or, rather, petered out (me included, though I am more ambivalent about the ending of this book).
I for one would love for Stuart to complete a trilogy of Glasgow novels. ‘Old Mungo’ would be as satisfying a title as any for the third, because one thing that fascinates me about the world of extreme poverty, deprivation, and violence depicted so powerfully here is what modern Glasgow looks like beneath the scars of her brutal past. What is this city and its people like today? What remains of the tenements? Is it haunted by the blood and violence that stalked its streets and took place behind closed doors?
In a 2015 BBC News article, Andrew Kerr wrote:
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was her Scottish secretary from 1986-1990, famously said in one interview about the Scottish view of Thatcher: "She was a woman, she was an English woman and she was a bossy English woman and they could probably put up with one of these but three simultaneously was a bit too much."
There is an underlying political current throughout the book that turns into quite a live wire whenever Thatcher is mentioned. One of the most devastating scenes in the book (and there are a lot of those) is when Mrs Campbell gets beaten up by her husband, an event that reverberates through the very floorboards of the tenement building.
When Mungo and Jodie go to her rescue by fabricating an excuse as to why she is needed in their flat, and Mungo innocently asks as to why she stays with the bastard, Mrs Campbell launches into a long diatribe justifying her husband’s appalling behaviour: “Ye’re too wee to know anything about men and their anger.”
Another ‘wee elephant’ in the room, to adopt Stuart’s phrasing, is the jacket copy describing this as “the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men.” A quotation from The Observer review declares this as “a gay Romeo and Juliet set in the brutal world of Glasgow’s housing estates”, a description that made me blanch. I think this marketing angle skews the reader’s expectations, because Mungo and James’s affair or dalliance or whatever is exceedingly slow burn. It begins with platonic innocence, and only becomes a focal point in the narrative after about 200 pages. That is halfway through a 400-page novel.
Having said that, the ‘two boys kissing’ cover does reflect two key kissing scenes that occur one after the other that are effectively mirror events. Still, I don’t think this cover is quite accurate in reflecting the tone of the novel. The ‘Mungo submerged’ cover is rather ambiguous and ominous, and it brilliantly reflects two key events involving water. This is the best cover of the two, in my opinion.
What really surprised me about the novel – and puts it in a different class than ‘Shuggie Bain’ altogether – is how bleak it is. If you thought the author’s Booker-winning debut was dark, you ain’t experienced nothing yet. I honestly think no publisher would have touched this with a barge pole if it had not been for Stuart’s commercial and critical success to date.
Apart from those trigger points, there is also the ‘wee matter’ of the Glaswegian dialect. Admittedly I had to carefully reread many sentences to make sure I got the gist of what was being said or inferred, not to mention having to Google quite a few words that I did not understand at all (here I think a brief glossary would have been helpful for international readers). I cannot even begin to imagine what listening to the audiobook must be like.
For my two cents, this is a much stronger and more nuanced novel. It interweaves two timelines: Mungo’s fishing trip, which has a palpable sense of dread hanging on every word, and then his life in Glasgow itself. Stuart’s characters are vivid and heart-breaking, from delicate cameos like Poor Wee Chickie to Ha-Ha, Jodie and, of course, Mungo and James. Their brief three-day interlude of mutual self-discovery is wrought with great delicacy and feeling, which makes the violence and horror this bubble of love and trust is embedded in all the more terrible as it unfolds so inexorably.
I had to put the novel down halfway at a particularly grim point, which made me wonder what had happened to the love angle. Stuart is an intuitive storyteller though. Just when I became overwhelmed and was about to give up any sense of hope in the humanity of the story, he quietly and effortlessly switched to tracing the growing attraction between Mungo and James, two damaged children from torn families in a broken world, and on the wrong side of a religious and cultural divide to boot. It is a wondrous light that glows all too briefly in the final darkness that descends so quickly.
One elephant in the room I want to get out of the way first: This is not ‘Shuggie Bain 2.0’, even though it features a similar setting and milieu. And an alcoholic mother called Mo-Maw. When Jodie asks her brother Mungo: “What on earth would you know about the ways of men, eh?”, what she should be warning him about are the ways (and wiles) of women.
There is none of the sentiment or accidental empathy here that accrued to the mother figure in ‘Shuggie Bain’, by dint of the reader spending so much time in her sozzled company (hogging the limelight from her son, whose name after all does adorn the cover).
Mo-Maw makes a brief appearance at the beginning when she waves Mungo on his way to a fateful fishing weekend with two complete strangers, and then only reappears again round about 100 pages in. Crucially, she is a truly monstrous figure with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, so the less time we spend in her company, the better.
Critics, armchair and otherwise, have not only been decrying ‘Young Mungo’ as ‘Shuggie Bain’ in a different cagoule, but are already lamenting the poor departed muse of author Douglas Stuart, who seems perpetually fixated on Glasgow.
Bear in mind that this is called ‘Young Mungo’, which clearly signposts the boundaries of the novel’s scope. Equally clear is that the ending is likely to irritate those same readers who were annoyed at how ‘Shuggie Bain’ ended. Or, rather, petered out (me included, though I am more ambivalent about the ending of this book).
I for one would love for Stuart to complete a trilogy of Glasgow novels. ‘Old Mungo’ would be as satisfying a title as any for the third, because one thing that fascinates me about the world of extreme poverty, deprivation, and violence depicted so powerfully here is what modern Glasgow looks like beneath the scars of her brutal past. What is this city and its people like today? What remains of the tenements? Is it haunted by the blood and violence that stalked its streets and took place behind closed doors?
In a 2015 BBC News article, Andrew Kerr wrote:
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was her Scottish secretary from 1986-1990, famously said in one interview about the Scottish view of Thatcher: "She was a woman, she was an English woman and she was a bossy English woman and they could probably put up with one of these but three simultaneously was a bit too much."
There is an underlying political current throughout the book that turns into quite a live wire whenever Thatcher is mentioned. One of the most devastating scenes in the book (and there are a lot of those) is when Mrs Campbell gets beaten up by her husband, an event that reverberates through the very floorboards of the tenement building.
When Mungo and Jodie go to her rescue by fabricating an excuse as to why she is needed in their flat, and Mungo innocently asks as to why she stays with the bastard, Mrs Campbell launches into a long diatribe justifying her husband’s appalling behaviour: “Ye’re too wee to know anything about men and their anger.”
Another ‘wee elephant’ in the room, to adopt Stuart’s phrasing, is the jacket copy describing this as “the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men.” A quotation from The Observer review declares this as “a gay Romeo and Juliet set in the brutal world of Glasgow’s housing estates”, a description that made me blanch. I think this marketing angle skews the reader’s expectations, because Mungo and James’s affair or dalliance or whatever is exceedingly slow burn. It begins with platonic innocence, and only becomes a focal point in the narrative after about 200 pages. That is halfway through a 400-page novel.
Having said that, the ‘two boys kissing’ cover does reflect two key kissing scenes that occur one after the other that are effectively mirror events. Still, I don’t think this cover is quite accurate in reflecting the tone of the novel. The ‘Mungo submerged’ cover is rather ambiguous and ominous, and it brilliantly reflects two key events involving water. This is the best cover of the two, in my opinion.
What really surprised me about the novel – and puts it in a different class than ‘Shuggie Bain’ altogether – is how bleak it is. If you thought the author’s Booker-winning debut was dark, you ain’t experienced nothing yet. I honestly think no publisher would have touched this with a barge pole if it had not been for Stuart’s commercial and critical success to date.
Apart from those trigger points, there is also the ‘wee matter’ of the Glaswegian dialect. Admittedly I had to carefully reread many sentences to make sure I got the gist of what was being said or inferred, not to mention having to Google quite a few words that I did not understand at all (here I think a brief glossary would have been helpful for international readers). I cannot even begin to imagine what listening to the audiobook must be like.
For my two cents, this is a much stronger and more nuanced novel. It interweaves two timelines: Mungo’s fishing trip, which has a palpable sense of dread hanging on every word, and then his life in Glasgow itself. Stuart’s characters are vivid and heart-breaking, from delicate cameos like Poor Wee Chickie to Ha-Ha, Jodie and, of course, Mungo and James. Their brief three-day interlude of mutual self-discovery is wrought with great delicacy and feeling, which makes the violence and horror this bubble of love and trust is embedded in all the more terrible as it unfolds so inexorably.
I had to put the novel down halfway at a particularly grim point, which made me wonder what had happened to the love angle. Stuart is an intuitive storyteller though. Just when I became overwhelmed and was about to give up any sense of hope in the humanity of the story, he quietly and effortlessly switched to tracing the growing attraction between Mungo and James, two damaged children from torn families in a broken world, and on the wrong side of a religious and cultural divide to boot. It is a wondrous light that glows all too briefly in the final darkness that descends so quickly.
April 5, 2022
I never read Shuggie Bain but saw it got lots of accolades. So, I was excited to listen to Stuart’s second book, Young Mungo. But I really struggled with it. It’s not a bad book. In fact, it’s incredibly well written. But it’s such a sad, deep, dark, ugly, depressing story, I had to force myself to keep with it at times.
I didn’t understand that the conflict between Protestants and Catholics raged in Scotland as Ireland. It’s the 1990s and fifteen year old Mungo lives in a Glasgow housing estate. He’s a soft soul in a hard world. His older brother is the leader of a gang and is trying to toughen Mungo up. His mother is a drunk and more absent than present. His sister tries to run the household while living her own life. Mungo meets James, a Catholic, and they fall in love. The only thing worse in this milieu than a cross sect romance is a queer romance.
In a second timeline, his mother sends him off with two of her “friends” from Alcoholics Anonymous. Suffice it to say, they are not on the wagon and their intentions are not pure. I couldn’t begin to understand the mother’s reasoning.
The book focuses on what it means to be a man. Some of the scenes I found disturbing and I am not easily shocked.
The book is uneven. I found it overly long and couldn’t help but think some tightening up would have helped.
The writing is lush, dense even. Stuart firmly puts you in the time and place. I listened to this and I will admit to struggling at times to understand what was being said. It wasn’t that Chris Reilly’s accent was that thick, but that the book includes a lot of Scottish words. I’m not sure if it would have been better to read than listen to it, but it was not an enjoyable audio experience.
I’m also totally torn on how to rate this book. I didn’t enjoy it at all but I can appreciate the writing. The story is so heavy, it’s like walking around with 20# weights on your shoulders. But that’s the point.
My thanks to Netgalley and RB Media for an advance copy of this book.
November 9, 2022
The new book by the author of Shuggie Bain! As gritty and heartbreaking, but also gorgeously showing the sweet love between two Glaswegian boys.
I’m not really a fan of photo’s on covers. But if a picture fits the story, I can appreciate it. Young Mungo has two covers that together tell the story of fifteen-year-old Mungo so beautifully. I love that both covers represent such a different side of Mungo. The US one shows an angelic and sensitive boy, his head below the surface, seemingly drowning, trapped into the water. The UK one shows two boys kissing, so incredibly intimate and personal, that makes me feel like I’m almost intruding. This photo (The Cock by Wolfgang Tillmans) is called a sweaty, lively, and joyful presentation of sexuality.
When I read the first sentences, I knew this story would be just as dark and disturbing as Shuggie Bain is. So, I tried to keep my emotions at bay. But I didn’t last long, and soon my feelings poured out of my body. My eyes got wet, I almost slammed on the table in anger, and my stomach contracted. But at other times, the corners of my mouth pulled up, and I had this warm feeling in my chest because Douglas Stuart added such a wonderful layer to this story, one that Shuggie Bain didn’t have: a sweet love story between two fifteen-year-olds who explored their sexuality so tenderly.
Douglas Stuart’s writing is vigorous, profound, and descriptive, and therefore, I could picture a drunk Mo-Maw, Mungo at the loch with those two men, or what was about to happen so well. At times I wanted to scream at Mungo to watch out and stay away because something terrible was going to happen, but Mungo was such a sweet and likable boy (a loyal dog according to Douglas Stuart) and just too naive. So different from all the others in that masculine working-class environment in Glasgow, a city split between Catholics and Protestants. Different except for James. The gentle and vulnerable love between those boys was the highlight of this story. I loved those first moments when Mungo and James comforted each other, and they made me forget the darkness and the heartbreaking moments for a while.
Just as Shuggie Bain isn’t a story for everyone, neither is this one. It’s disturbing and triggering in so many ways. But because of the tender love between those two boys, Young Mungo felt a little more hopeful to me. That ending … I’d really like to meet them again, for instance, as side characters in Douglas’ next book (which I’d like to be a little less dark), just to know they’re happy and doing okay.
A story like this isn’t one to devour in one sitting. I read this book in small pieces, put it away, hugged my family (or my cats), and then dove in again because I wanted to be back with Mungo. I loved Shuggie Bain and still remember that book so vividly, but Mungo will always have a special place in my heart.
I received an ARC from Grove Atlantic and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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I’m not really a fan of photo’s on covers. But if a picture fits the story, I can appreciate it. Young Mungo has two covers that together tell the story of fifteen-year-old Mungo so beautifully. I love that both covers represent such a different side of Mungo. The US one shows an angelic and sensitive boy, his head below the surface, seemingly drowning, trapped into the water. The UK one shows two boys kissing, so incredibly intimate and personal, that makes me feel like I’m almost intruding. This photo (The Cock by Wolfgang Tillmans) is called a sweaty, lively, and joyful presentation of sexuality.
When I read the first sentences, I knew this story would be just as dark and disturbing as Shuggie Bain is. So, I tried to keep my emotions at bay. But I didn’t last long, and soon my feelings poured out of my body. My eyes got wet, I almost slammed on the table in anger, and my stomach contracted. But at other times, the corners of my mouth pulled up, and I had this warm feeling in my chest because Douglas Stuart added such a wonderful layer to this story, one that Shuggie Bain didn’t have: a sweet love story between two fifteen-year-olds who explored their sexuality so tenderly.
Douglas Stuart’s writing is vigorous, profound, and descriptive, and therefore, I could picture a drunk Mo-Maw, Mungo at the loch with those two men, or what was about to happen so well. At times I wanted to scream at Mungo to watch out and stay away because something terrible was going to happen, but Mungo was such a sweet and likable boy (a loyal dog according to Douglas Stuart) and just too naive. So different from all the others in that masculine working-class environment in Glasgow, a city split between Catholics and Protestants. Different except for James. The gentle and vulnerable love between those boys was the highlight of this story. I loved those first moments when Mungo and James comforted each other, and they made me forget the darkness and the heartbreaking moments for a while.
Just as Shuggie Bain isn’t a story for everyone, neither is this one. It’s disturbing and triggering in so many ways. But because of the tender love between those two boys, Young Mungo felt a little more hopeful to me. That ending … I’d really like to meet them again, for instance, as side characters in Douglas’ next book (which I’d like to be a little less dark), just to know they’re happy and doing okay.
A story like this isn’t one to devour in one sitting. I read this book in small pieces, put it away, hugged my family (or my cats), and then dove in again because I wanted to be back with Mungo. I loved Shuggie Bain and still remember that book so vividly, but Mungo will always have a special place in my heart.
I received an ARC from Grove Atlantic and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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April 1, 2023
A24 TO ADAPT MUNGO FOR TV!
Broadcaster and schedule not set.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I want to address something that's been bothering me a lot to start off this review:
There. I've said it. I stand by it. Adjust your seatbelts, laddies and gentlewomen, and listen up.
Mungo's a teenager with a truly evil, selfish alcoholic mother, a violent, should-be-imprisoned brother, and a sweet but misguided, loving but naïve sister, and a serious tic gifted to him by his unaddressed, undiagnosed neurodivergence. His life isn't one tiny bit of fun, and unlike Shuggie in Author Stuart's first book, he doesn't have a love object in his entire life. He loves his sister and she loves him, but that's a little like the lame helping the halt. Shuggie was entirely absorbed in loving his mother, but Mungo seldom sees his and when he does, it's usually better for him not to spend much time in her toxic terrible black hole of a presence. Being a neurodivergent person, Mungo fixates on his too-young, too-broken mother for whatever guideposts she can offer; she sucks the whole of his lovingkindness down like her genuine love, fortified wine, and gives none back. So he knows, at least seems to know, she isn't a model he can follow. His sister does the best she can to fill the kindness void, but she's barely older than Mungo by the calendar. She's gotten out of a bad jam, and come to know she can't live in this world...meaning she has to leave Mungo behind. Hamish? All Hamish does, all he knows, is rage and violence. There will be nothing else left in Mungo's life...no other emotional reality.
This, then, isn't Shuggie Redux. Stop pretending it is. Yes, it's set in deindustrializing Glasgow. Yes, it takes place in the working class parts of that world. Alcoholic parent, abusive sibling, all there...but the meat of this story is Mungo, and therefore this story could not be less like the family that slips away from Shuggie, that he just...loses...no fault of his own. The one good thing, as he tells himself (and with which I agree) is that he has is the love he bears for and gets from the Catholic boy who lives near him: James. James, son of a cancer-taken mother, an oil-rig worker father, and in love with Mungo. Who, need I mention, loves James right back. They explore their teenaged awkward bodies, they try to figure out the HUGE new emotions, and they face up to the impossibility of being openly gay in their world. Hamish? He'll kill Mungo; James's father's already had a go at killing him for it. James, older by almost a year, is the one who has to bear the public brunt of their inevitable discovery...Mungo just can't.
Not to say Mungo's not hapless and helpless. He's simply clueless, he lacks a kind of inner compass that warns a person away from impulsive action. In the end, it causes a world of trouble for him, and all of it is his mother's fault. She wants to be alone, to get her funtimes with a new man, so off she packs Mungo (freshly beaten by Hamish for the James-loving faggot that he is) off with...strangers, basically. And that goes epically badly for Mungo. He can think of nothing, no way out of his terrible situation. He's got nothing except what he's seen, what's surrounded him his whole life when Life, the great existential crisis that is Life, crashes down on him. That it is a test is clear; how he responds to the test isn't obviously the way he would have even a day before it came upon him. Mungo makes his whole life anew when he absolutely can do nothing except react, respond to the great crisis.
It is harsh, ugly, and frightening, and it comes from events so hideous that I was sure I would lose my rag and start screaming incoherently at the Kindle. And it was, in this reader's angry, bitter judgment, the only and the best way he could have behaved. It was a boy, cooked in a bath of rage, becoming the only man that bath dissolved the fatty, weakening childness off of him to be.
There is a scene at the very end of the book, a moment, a thing we're not expecting. It is, of course, Author Stuart's last word. He wrote this book, this harsh and unyielding and rageful story, the way he wrote Shuggie Bain: without mercy. It was the perfect ending. And this was the best way he could possibly have followed that book up: darkness has shadows, too.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I want to address something that's been bothering me a lot to start off this review:
There. I've said it. I stand by it. Adjust your seatbelts, laddies and gentlewomen, and listen up.
Mungo's a teenager with a truly evil, selfish alcoholic mother, a violent, should-be-imprisoned brother, and a sweet but misguided, loving but naïve sister, and a serious tic gifted to him by his unaddressed, undiagnosed neurodivergence. His life isn't one tiny bit of fun, and unlike Shuggie in Author Stuart's first book, he doesn't have a love object in his entire life. He loves his sister and she loves him, but that's a little like the lame helping the halt. Shuggie was entirely absorbed in loving his mother, but Mungo seldom sees his and when he does, it's usually better for him not to spend much time in her toxic terrible black hole of a presence. Being a neurodivergent person, Mungo fixates on his too-young, too-broken mother for whatever guideposts she can offer; she sucks the whole of his lovingkindness down like her genuine love, fortified wine, and gives none back. So he knows, at least seems to know, she isn't a model he can follow. His sister does the best she can to fill the kindness void, but she's barely older than Mungo by the calendar. She's gotten out of a bad jam, and come to know she can't live in this world...meaning she has to leave Mungo behind. Hamish? All Hamish does, all he knows, is rage and violence. There will be nothing else left in Mungo's life...no other emotional reality.
This, then, isn't Shuggie Redux. Stop pretending it is. Yes, it's set in deindustrializing Glasgow. Yes, it takes place in the working class parts of that world. Alcoholic parent, abusive sibling, all there...but the meat of this story is Mungo, and therefore this story could not be less like the family that slips away from Shuggie, that he just...loses...no fault of his own. The one good thing, as he tells himself (and with which I agree) is that he has is the love he bears for and gets from the Catholic boy who lives near him: James. James, son of a cancer-taken mother, an oil-rig worker father, and in love with Mungo. Who, need I mention, loves James right back. They explore their teenaged awkward bodies, they try to figure out the HUGE new emotions, and they face up to the impossibility of being openly gay in their world. Hamish? He'll kill Mungo; James's father's already had a go at killing him for it. James, older by almost a year, is the one who has to bear the public brunt of their inevitable discovery...Mungo just can't.
Not to say Mungo's not hapless and helpless. He's simply clueless, he lacks a kind of inner compass that warns a person away from impulsive action. In the end, it causes a world of trouble for him, and all of it is his mother's fault. She wants to be alone, to get her funtimes with a new man, so off she packs Mungo (freshly beaten by Hamish for the James-loving faggot that he is) off with...strangers, basically. And that goes epically badly for Mungo. He can think of nothing, no way out of his terrible situation. He's got nothing except what he's seen, what's surrounded him his whole life when Life, the great existential crisis that is Life, crashes down on him. That it is a test is clear; how he responds to the test isn't obviously the way he would have even a day before it came upon him. Mungo makes his whole life anew when he absolutely can do nothing except react, respond to the great crisis.
It is harsh, ugly, and frightening, and it comes from events so hideous that I was sure I would lose my rag and start screaming incoherently at the Kindle. And it was, in this reader's angry, bitter judgment, the only and the best way he could have behaved. It was a boy, cooked in a bath of rage, becoming the only man that bath dissolved the fatty, weakening childness off of him to be.
There is a scene at the very end of the book, a moment, a thing we're not expecting. It is, of course, Author Stuart's last word. He wrote this book, this harsh and unyielding and rageful story, the way he wrote Shuggie Bain: without mercy. It was the perfect ending. And this was the best way he could possibly have followed that book up: darkness has shadows, too.
May 9, 2022
In a Nutshell: Depending on what you like as a reader, you are either going to love this book or hate it. Very few will fall in the in-between range. Unfortunately for me, I hated it. The audiobook made matters worse.
Story:
Where the book worked for me:
✔ Some part of the prose is beautifully written.
✔ It is set in the Glasgow of the early 1990s and SEEMS to capture the gloomy part of the city aptly.
✔ I appreciate the fact that more queer love stories are making their way into the world, EVEN THOUGH this is NOT the kind of queer content I want to read.
Where the book did not work for me:
❌ Nothing much happens in the first half and too much happens in the second half.
❌ The book doesn’t feel like effortless writing. It tries too hard to justify the tag of 'literary fiction' and is just as verbose as the blurb indicates. Some analogies work. Most are superfluous and/or superficial. Flowery prose appeals to me only if it is accompanied by a strong plot. When there are miles and miles of prose and barely any signs of a plot, I lose my interest.
❌ Atmosphere and literary flourishes have been given the highest priority. Plot progression, the lowest. The plot here goes in every direction except straight ahead.
❌ I usually enjoy reading grey characters but this time, not a single one of them gained my loyalty or sympathy. The one to come closest was Mungo's elder sister Jodie.
❌ The blurb makes it seem like it's a forbidden love story between a Protestant boy and a Catholic one. This forms just a small part of the storyline. The main story is more like a bildungsroman, but not in a good way.
❌ Make a list of bad things that could happen in a literary fiction. You will find every item on that list in this novel. It felt like misery porn. Not one good thing happens to anyone! Sensitive readers, stay away from the book. I won’t give a list of trigger warnings so just trust me on this: every single triggering issue is in this storyline. Some of these scenes were way too graphic.
❌ I can understand Mungo snapping under the incidents that happened in the current timeline but seriously? Snapping that way? It felt so abrupt and out of character. He was just 15 for God’s sake! What the heck was the intent behind that decision? (Actually, I fail to understand the intent behind this entire plot!)
The audiobook experience:
The audiobook clocks at 13 hrs 40 min and is narrated by Chris Reilly. I really can’t comment much on his narration because the content itself was such that I kept zoning out. He read well but he had a strong Scottish(?) accent which was initially tough to get attuned to. This meant that I couldn’t even increase the speed of the audio for a major chunk of the book.
Furthermore, the audio doesn’t distinguish between the two timelines. Each new section begins with just the chapter number. It's tedious to keep the story straight when you need to keep waiting for a clue about the track playing in your ears. Add in the fact that I couldn’t even concentrate and I found myself totally lost multiple times over. I do NOT recommend the audio version.
I MIGHT have liked this a tad better if I had read it. But as an audiobook, it was a dud. The only reason I grabbed this was because I had heard so much about ‘Shuggie Bain’. I can’t make a comparison between the two because I haven’t read ‘Shuggie Bain’. (And now I am certain that I never will.)
I can see how some readers will go gaga over this book. Those who believe literary fiction serves its purpose best if it delves into the dreary side of human existence might love this story. But it simply wasn’t my cup of tea.
This is going to be the very first ARC I am rating as a 1 star and I hate doing this. But giving it two stars will not represent my experience accurately. It was just a waste of my time and a terribly frustrating read. The only reason I didn’t DNF it was that it was an audiobook.
I simply can’t recommend this book. But hey, 86% of GR reviews rate it 4 stars and above. So you might still like it. Do read the other reviews before you make up your mind. If you do decide to read it, please don’t go for the audio version.
My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “Young Mungo”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. I’m very sorry this worked out so badly.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
Story:
15 year old Mungo is the youngest of three siblings. With an absent dad and an uncaring alcoholic mom, Mungo grows up primarily bonding with his 17 year old sister Jodie, who is forced to take care of the home along with her studies. Their elder brother Hamish is a gang leader and head of a Protestant group that engages in violent fights against a neighbouring Catholic gang.
Protestant Mungo falls for Catholic Jamie, despite their best efforts to suppress their feelings. To “rectify” the issue and the repercussions of this forbidden love, Mungo’s mom sends him away on a fishing trip with two men from her AA group in order to “man him up”.
The story comes in two timelines – one detailing the fishing trip and what happens to Mungo with the two strangers his mom has assigned him to; and one about the events that lead to the fishing trip.
The book is written in a limited third person narration mainly from Mungo’s point of view.
Where the book worked for me:
✔ Some part of the prose is beautifully written.
✔ It is set in the Glasgow of the early 1990s and SEEMS to capture the gloomy part of the city aptly.
✔ I appreciate the fact that more queer love stories are making their way into the world, EVEN THOUGH this is NOT the kind of queer content I want to read.
Where the book did not work for me:
❌ Nothing much happens in the first half and too much happens in the second half.
❌ The book doesn’t feel like effortless writing. It tries too hard to justify the tag of 'literary fiction' and is just as verbose as the blurb indicates. Some analogies work. Most are superfluous and/or superficial. Flowery prose appeals to me only if it is accompanied by a strong plot. When there are miles and miles of prose and barely any signs of a plot, I lose my interest.
❌ Atmosphere and literary flourishes have been given the highest priority. Plot progression, the lowest. The plot here goes in every direction except straight ahead.
❌ I usually enjoy reading grey characters but this time, not a single one of them gained my loyalty or sympathy. The one to come closest was Mungo's elder sister Jodie.
❌ The blurb makes it seem like it's a forbidden love story between a Protestant boy and a Catholic one. This forms just a small part of the storyline. The main story is more like a bildungsroman, but not in a good way.
❌ Make a list of bad things that could happen in a literary fiction. You will find every item on that list in this novel. It felt like misery porn. Not one good thing happens to anyone! Sensitive readers, stay away from the book. I won’t give a list of trigger warnings so just trust me on this: every single triggering issue is in this storyline. Some of these scenes were way too graphic.
❌ I can understand Mungo snapping under the incidents that happened in the current timeline but seriously? Snapping that way? It felt so abrupt and out of character. He was just 15 for God’s sake! What the heck was the intent behind that decision? (Actually, I fail to understand the intent behind this entire plot!)
The audiobook experience:
The audiobook clocks at 13 hrs 40 min and is narrated by Chris Reilly. I really can’t comment much on his narration because the content itself was such that I kept zoning out. He read well but he had a strong Scottish(?) accent which was initially tough to get attuned to. This meant that I couldn’t even increase the speed of the audio for a major chunk of the book.
Furthermore, the audio doesn’t distinguish between the two timelines. Each new section begins with just the chapter number. It's tedious to keep the story straight when you need to keep waiting for a clue about the track playing in your ears. Add in the fact that I couldn’t even concentrate and I found myself totally lost multiple times over. I do NOT recommend the audio version.
I MIGHT have liked this a tad better if I had read it. But as an audiobook, it was a dud. The only reason I grabbed this was because I had heard so much about ‘Shuggie Bain’. I can’t make a comparison between the two because I haven’t read ‘Shuggie Bain’. (And now I am certain that I never will.)
I can see how some readers will go gaga over this book. Those who believe literary fiction serves its purpose best if it delves into the dreary side of human existence might love this story. But it simply wasn’t my cup of tea.
This is going to be the very first ARC I am rating as a 1 star and I hate doing this. But giving it two stars will not represent my experience accurately. It was just a waste of my time and a terribly frustrating read. The only reason I didn’t DNF it was that it was an audiobook.
I simply can’t recommend this book. But hey, 86% of GR reviews rate it 4 stars and above. So you might still like it. Do read the other reviews before you make up your mind. If you do decide to read it, please don’t go for the audio version.
My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “Young Mungo”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. I’m very sorry this worked out so badly.
***********************
Join me on the Facebook group, Readers Forever! , for more reviews, book-related discussions and fun.
July 12, 2022
This is not a bad book from Douglas Stuart who won the Booker Prize with his debut, Shuggie Bain, but the problem was my expectations. I cannot express how much I loved Shuggie, it broke my heart and blew me away. I know many reviewers have loved this, so apologies, but for me it embodies what can often be the problem of the second book after a runaway and highly acclaimed bestseller. Here, there were far too many similarities to Shuggie, and whilst the writing was terrific, additionally the storytelling didn't reach the exquisite heights of Shuggie either. Please do not make a decision to not read this on the basis of my thoughts alone, do read other far more positive reviews. I look forward to Stuart's next offering, which I have no doubt that I will be reading.
April 12, 2023
Znakomite. Ale uprzedzam, że bolesne.
February 10, 2022
In case anyone is wondering if “Young Mungo”, is as good as “Snuggie Bain”, by Scottish-American Douglas Stuart, the gifted 2020 Booker Prize winner - the answer is YES!!!!
It’s a deeply felt - heartbreaking-powerful & beautiful complicated story of a young gay man dealing with traditionalism, tolerance, open-mindedness, responsiveness, observance, freethinking, noncompliance, and ‘young love’…..
….with some of the most gorgeous writing and intimate storytelling there ever was. From tender to bloodthirsty brutal…..
Douglas Stuart opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to fear, love, family brokenness, manliness, manhood, masculinity, (gut wrenching examination from every angle) > fragile, rugged, confidence, power, force, muscled, typical traits, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’……a deep look at the traditional and negative effects.
In need of a Man-up weekend?
Know where the term came from?
It seemed to emerge from the sub language of American football (figures).
In need of a little camping trip?
A little fishing?
…. Fishing rods, plastic shopping bags filled with childish things,?
A little bloody homophobic violence?
A little devastating trauma, childhood abuse?
A couple of strangers to lead the way?
A little alcohol addiction?
A little shame?
A few days of happiness?
A few laughs?
A few tears?
YOUR HEART MELTING ….with the passion of young love?
Glasgow - home - identify- soul searching?
“One weekend away doesnae
make you a man. Ye’re not to big to go over my knee”…….
It took me a little getting used to the dialect. In the beginning— I had to re-read the first few pages — (my own lack of confidence that I might not understand it)….but not so!!!
If I could figure out the dialect- as American as apple pie— anyone can.
It actually became so much fun to engage in the Glaelic-Scottish dialect- (the endangered language), that I’ve started saying *Aye* instead of yes, to my husband. And…..”Ye’re only a wee, thing, ye?” ——I got very funny looks from Paul - but he laughed and rolled with my new word play.
But when I asked Paul when did “yer balls drop”? ….Paul knew I had flipped my lid. (we chuckled)
I looked up a few words - and even a TV British series. [Hyacinth Bucket].
I didn’t mind visiting Google. It was part of the pleasure. Besides, I already knew the Scottish talk funny…..with euphemisms being - both -charming and offensive.
Mungo is fifteen. (sweet, gentle, innocently naïve, obedient nature).
He grew up in Glasgow, from a working class-dysfunctional-protestant family. His sister, Jodie is only a year older—but she adopted the role as surrogate-mother to Mungo. (for good reasons)…Jodie doesn’t want Mungo to turn out like their older brother, Hamish- a gang leader. (personally, I loved Jodie’s character).
Mungo’s mother - Maureen - ‘Mo-Maw’ — sent him off on a fishing trip with strangers: St. Christopher and Gallowgate.
“We’ll look after ye, Mungo. Nae worries. We’ll have some laughs, and you can bring yer mammy some fresh fish”.
“Yer mammy felt us all about that mess ye got yourself into with those dirty Fenian bastards. Catholics, man. Butter widnae melt. Mungo had been trying not to think about it”.
“Dinnae worry, grinned Gallowgate. We’ll get you away free that scheme. We’ll have a proper boy’s weekend.
Make a man out of you yet, eh?”
The *Pals* (strangers), were friends of his mother.
“They are members of Alcoholic Anonymous. S’pose my maw thought it would do us awesome good to get some air about us”.
“Young Mungo” is crafted in two timelines. Both blended together with such an ‘ease-flow’.
One minute we are taken by Mungo’s inner thoughts back home about his bearable and insufferable family - sister, brother, mother, grandmother, father, growing up….
And the next minute we are on a dangerous fishing trip where Mungo meets James, a Catholic, a little older, a pigeon fancier.
And…..
…..from friendship—love blossoms.
Filled with heavy issues - dark as dark ever was - this novel is incredibly seductive…..encompassed by the mastery-passionate-storytelling.
A few excerpts:
“Mungo found himself marveling at his sister, Jodie, ….a woman of superior design. She was able to take the blows and reward them with a feeling of warmth and protection. It wasn’t like when you punched a man. On the rare occasion he dared to retaliate against his brother, Hamish, his “very fiber reached back out with Bone and gristle and muscle to return the pain up Mungo’s arm. When you hurt a man, he hurt you back”.
“The falling darkness ate the clouds out of the sky. As the lights came on in the slick streets the protestant boys began to pour out of the tenement mouths and crow at one another like nocturnal scavengers. Mungo watched from the third-floor window
as the older Billies congregated outside the Paki shop on the corner. They gathered in the light of its open doorway, fluttering like colour-blocked moths. From high above, Mungo could tell they were jumpy and unpredictable with adrenaline, looking forward to a fight, dreaming of their own glory, anything that would put a shine on their name”.
“They hung on each other affectionally, wide manly hugs, bodies never touching but full of love and rage, eager to stab and maim the Royal Catholics”.
“Some of the alcoholics were eager for the meeting to be over, others were worried about what would happen when it was”.
“They congregated in groups of four or five and shared their news. Mungo couldn’t hear what they were saying but he appreciated the way they laid their hands on each other’ arms, and when they spoke, he liked how everyone listened and seemed to feel it deeply in their own bones.
It was a funny thing to observe; near strangers who had shared some of their deepest shames, their most vulnerable moments, were now gathering to make small talk about the weather or if
Cranhill-Cathy would make it to the regionals and the ladies curling tournament. They had told the most heartbreaking truths, and now in the space of twenty minutes, they were laughing about Hyacinth Bucket”.
“If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s snobbery and one-upmanship. People trying to pretend they’re superior. Makes it so much harder for those of us who are”.
5+++++ stars!
It’s a deeply felt - heartbreaking-powerful & beautiful complicated story of a young gay man dealing with traditionalism, tolerance, open-mindedness, responsiveness, observance, freethinking, noncompliance, and ‘young love’…..
….with some of the most gorgeous writing and intimate storytelling there ever was. From tender to bloodthirsty brutal…..
Douglas Stuart opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to fear, love, family brokenness, manliness, manhood, masculinity, (gut wrenching examination from every angle) > fragile, rugged, confidence, power, force, muscled, typical traits, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’……a deep look at the traditional and negative effects.
In need of a Man-up weekend?
Know where the term came from?
It seemed to emerge from the sub language of American football (figures).
In need of a little camping trip?
A little fishing?
…. Fishing rods, plastic shopping bags filled with childish things,?
A little bloody homophobic violence?
A little devastating trauma, childhood abuse?
A couple of strangers to lead the way?
A little alcohol addiction?
A little shame?
A few days of happiness?
A few laughs?
A few tears?
YOUR HEART MELTING ….with the passion of young love?
Glasgow - home - identify- soul searching?
“One weekend away doesnae
make you a man. Ye’re not to big to go over my knee”…….
It took me a little getting used to the dialect. In the beginning— I had to re-read the first few pages — (my own lack of confidence that I might not understand it)….but not so!!!
If I could figure out the dialect- as American as apple pie— anyone can.
It actually became so much fun to engage in the Glaelic-Scottish dialect- (the endangered language), that I’ve started saying *Aye* instead of yes, to my husband. And…..”Ye’re only a wee, thing, ye?” ——I got very funny looks from Paul - but he laughed and rolled with my new word play.
But when I asked Paul when did “yer balls drop”? ….Paul knew I had flipped my lid. (we chuckled)
I looked up a few words - and even a TV British series. [Hyacinth Bucket].
I didn’t mind visiting Google. It was part of the pleasure. Besides, I already knew the Scottish talk funny…..with euphemisms being - both -charming and offensive.
Mungo is fifteen. (sweet, gentle, innocently naïve, obedient nature).
He grew up in Glasgow, from a working class-dysfunctional-protestant family. His sister, Jodie is only a year older—but she adopted the role as surrogate-mother to Mungo. (for good reasons)…Jodie doesn’t want Mungo to turn out like their older brother, Hamish- a gang leader. (personally, I loved Jodie’s character).
Mungo’s mother - Maureen - ‘Mo-Maw’ — sent him off on a fishing trip with strangers: St. Christopher and Gallowgate.
“We’ll look after ye, Mungo. Nae worries. We’ll have some laughs, and you can bring yer mammy some fresh fish”.
“Yer mammy felt us all about that mess ye got yourself into with those dirty Fenian bastards. Catholics, man. Butter widnae melt. Mungo had been trying not to think about it”.
“Dinnae worry, grinned Gallowgate. We’ll get you away free that scheme. We’ll have a proper boy’s weekend.
Make a man out of you yet, eh?”
The *Pals* (strangers), were friends of his mother.
“They are members of Alcoholic Anonymous. S’pose my maw thought it would do us awesome good to get some air about us”.
“Young Mungo” is crafted in two timelines. Both blended together with such an ‘ease-flow’.
One minute we are taken by Mungo’s inner thoughts back home about his bearable and insufferable family - sister, brother, mother, grandmother, father, growing up….
And the next minute we are on a dangerous fishing trip where Mungo meets James, a Catholic, a little older, a pigeon fancier.
And…..
…..from friendship—love blossoms.
Filled with heavy issues - dark as dark ever was - this novel is incredibly seductive…..encompassed by the mastery-passionate-storytelling.
A few excerpts:
“Mungo found himself marveling at his sister, Jodie, ….a woman of superior design. She was able to take the blows and reward them with a feeling of warmth and protection. It wasn’t like when you punched a man. On the rare occasion he dared to retaliate against his brother, Hamish, his “very fiber reached back out with Bone and gristle and muscle to return the pain up Mungo’s arm. When you hurt a man, he hurt you back”.
“The falling darkness ate the clouds out of the sky. As the lights came on in the slick streets the protestant boys began to pour out of the tenement mouths and crow at one another like nocturnal scavengers. Mungo watched from the third-floor window
as the older Billies congregated outside the Paki shop on the corner. They gathered in the light of its open doorway, fluttering like colour-blocked moths. From high above, Mungo could tell they were jumpy and unpredictable with adrenaline, looking forward to a fight, dreaming of their own glory, anything that would put a shine on their name”.
“They hung on each other affectionally, wide manly hugs, bodies never touching but full of love and rage, eager to stab and maim the Royal Catholics”.
“Some of the alcoholics were eager for the meeting to be over, others were worried about what would happen when it was”.
“They congregated in groups of four or five and shared their news. Mungo couldn’t hear what they were saying but he appreciated the way they laid their hands on each other’ arms, and when they spoke, he liked how everyone listened and seemed to feel it deeply in their own bones.
It was a funny thing to observe; near strangers who had shared some of their deepest shames, their most vulnerable moments, were now gathering to make small talk about the weather or if
Cranhill-Cathy would make it to the regionals and the ladies curling tournament. They had told the most heartbreaking truths, and now in the space of twenty minutes, they were laughing about Hyacinth Bucket”.
“If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s snobbery and one-upmanship. People trying to pretend they’re superior. Makes it so much harder for those of us who are”.
5+++++ stars!
Read
November 27, 2022Trigger warnings:
Use of slurs: Homophobic, Racist, Ableist.
Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Abuse (Sexual, Physical, Emotional, Child, Domestic), Grooming, Murder, Violence (including anti-religious and homophobic hate crimes), Homophobia, Addiction, Death, Alcohol, Abortion, Blood/Injury
Moderate: Self harm, Abandonment, Animal Death, Drug Use
Use of slurs: Homophobic, Racist, Ableist.
Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Abuse (Sexual, Physical, Emotional, Child, Domestic), Grooming, Murder, Violence (including anti-religious and homophobic hate crimes), Homophobia, Addiction, Death, Alcohol, Abortion, Blood/Injury
Moderate: Self harm, Abandonment, Animal Death, Drug Use
May 20, 2022
As much as I loved Douglas Stuart's debut novel “Shuggie Bain” and its complex portrayal of a mother's addiction to alcohol, I was left longing to know a bit more about Shuggie himself and what it's like to be a young working class gay boy in Scotland. There are many touching scenes with Shuggie and it primarily focuses on his perspective, but it's really the story of his mum Agnes. So I was thrilled to find that “Young Mungo” is almost exclusively about Mungo himself. Superficially the two novels might seem similar as they include characters from the same socio-economic background in the 1990s who are also wrestling with issues to do with poverty, addiction and toxic masculinity. However, the characters in “Young Mungo” are distinct and deal with the challenges they face in very different ways. Another issue which is touched upon in “Shuggie Bain” that I wanted to read more about was the sectarian conflict in Glasgow between Catholics and Protestants. This clash is also brought centre stage in this new novel because Mungo is born into a Protestant family and gets drawn into the resulting street violence with Catholics. Moreover, it's the queer 'Romeo & Juliet' story I always longed to read because Mungo falls for Catholic teen James. The result is a beautiful and devastatingly moving romance that's also about a personal quest for acceptance in a community that cannot accept or allow difference.
Read my full review of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart at LonesomeReader
I also reviewed a negative review of this novel to explain how it's WRONG 😄
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17SQ1DLgBc
Read my full review of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart at LonesomeReader
I also reviewed a negative review of this novel to explain how it's WRONG 😄
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m17SQ1DLgBc
June 29, 2022
4.5/5
a harrowing story written in a beautiful way.
many TWs
a harrowing story written in a beautiful way.
many TWs
May 6, 2023
Well that was depressing.
I loved it!
Do you know that feeling when one of your colleagues at work comes down with a stomach flu, and then one by one your coworkers drop like flies, and you know it's only a matter of time until it hits you too?
That's what reading this book felt like to me.
From page one there was this growing dread building up inside of me that finally erupted into a terrible sick feeling.
Part of the reason Young Mungo evoked such strong emotions in me, is how real the characters felt. They were so fleshed out and deeply human, I felt like I could reach into the pages and grasp them.
The whole book was very hard to read in the best way possible. You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind for it.
TW for about every flavor of violence.
I loved it!
Do you know that feeling when one of your colleagues at work comes down with a stomach flu, and then one by one your coworkers drop like flies, and you know it's only a matter of time until it hits you too?
That's what reading this book felt like to me.
From page one there was this growing dread building up inside of me that finally erupted into a terrible sick feeling.
Part of the reason Young Mungo evoked such strong emotions in me, is how real the characters felt. They were so fleshed out and deeply human, I felt like I could reach into the pages and grasp them.
The whole book was very hard to read in the best way possible. You definitely have to be in the right frame of mind for it.
TW for about every flavor of violence.
February 20, 2024
For non-UK, some vocab help: https://waterfall007.wordpress.com/20...
Such a beautiful harsh realistic story. Mungo Hamilton's growth within himself in the short span of time represented here is incredible. He sees constant hope in everyone, most of all his alcoholic mother. There are premonitions of what is to come stated throughout this book, but its not over until its over. I instantly wanted my own copy of this book as soon I concluded.
The realism here is crazy-good. I felt like I was standing inside this story at all times. I wanted to help constantly, but had to suffer and just watch/listen. Two stories unfold simultaneously here. One starts just a few days ago. The other story starts longer ago, prior to all these characters meeting, yet still very recently. They converge on the ending.
This book only took four good sittings to finish, since I really could not put it down. I kept a log of all the Scottish words on some notebook paper. About 320 words I did not know (about 1/page). Most were places or maybe a brand-name for a beer or food. These places were maybe on 'the west side', or up North. Brand names surely eluded to high/low quality of that item. But none of this slowed me down, since the context in which the word was used made it abundantly clear what was meant. I came to really like all the vernacular that made me feel totally like I was in Glasgow on the East Side. Even the other words (cagoule, smirr, anorak, gallus, etc) were easy to figure out.
Mungo has it so hard, but like most kids, just accepts it as his hand dealt to him. He has such a bad support group: alcoholic semi-young single mom that thinks she is still a teenager; violent proud protestant brother that is two years older, and even smaller than Mungo, but who loves causing mayhem and getting into fights with the Catholics in green/white across the bridge. His slightly older sister Jodie has grown up fast, and represents the only stability for Mungo. But she is flirting with her own adult level problems.
The Catholic boy James is slightly older and lives within sight of Mungo's residence. But he goes to a completely different school. This feels like Romeo/Juliet with these young lovers. There are even lines from Shakespeare in here (hint).
The tension in this book oscillates greatly as the stories unfold and then converge. I wanted to keep reading to 'find out', yet I also wanted to simply stop and freeze the story when happiness appeared. The foreboding with very simple hints regularly lets you know that this will not be a simple ending.
If you see my favorites, you'll know I like these tough serious/real-feeling gay themed books. (Lie With Me, Swimming in the Dark, In Memoriam, Cleanness, Hearts Invisible Furies, In The Absence of Men, Song of Achilles, Giovanni's Room, The Charioteer, The End of Eddy, Call Me By Your Name). This book ranks right with these. My tears were very few in this book as the scenes are tough and Mungo also doesn't shed tears (the way boys/men are taught not to).
This is a solid 5 for me.
Be careful with some triggers: alcoholism. mid-teen rape. violent fight descriptions, leading to deaths.
I will surely buy a hard-copy of this book. I now want to read Stuart's "Shuggie Bain". And maybe now I'm ready for "A Little Life" as I saw one reviewer comment that the characters here in Mungo are thrown 'under the bus' here more than in A Little Life. Maybe I can survive all those soul-crushing reviews I've read there.
~300 Vocab words
Definitions at: https://waterfall007.wordpress.com/20...
Such a beautiful harsh realistic story. Mungo Hamilton's growth within himself in the short span of time represented here is incredible. He sees constant hope in everyone, most of all his alcoholic mother. There are premonitions of what is to come stated throughout this book, but its not over until its over. I instantly wanted my own copy of this book as soon I concluded.
The realism here is crazy-good. I felt like I was standing inside this story at all times. I wanted to help constantly, but had to suffer and just watch/listen. Two stories unfold simultaneously here. One starts just a few days ago. The other story starts longer ago, prior to all these characters meeting, yet still very recently. They converge on the ending.
This book only took four good sittings to finish, since I really could not put it down. I kept a log of all the Scottish words on some notebook paper. About 320 words I did not know (about 1/page). Most were places or maybe a brand-name for a beer or food. These places were maybe on 'the west side', or up North. Brand names surely eluded to high/low quality of that item. But none of this slowed me down, since the context in which the word was used made it abundantly clear what was meant. I came to really like all the vernacular that made me feel totally like I was in Glasgow on the East Side. Even the other words (cagoule, smirr, anorak, gallus, etc) were easy to figure out.
Mungo has it so hard, but like most kids, just accepts it as his hand dealt to him. He has such a bad support group: alcoholic semi-young single mom that thinks she is still a teenager; violent proud protestant brother that is two years older, and even smaller than Mungo, but who loves causing mayhem and getting into fights with the Catholics in green/white across the bridge. His slightly older sister Jodie has grown up fast, and represents the only stability for Mungo. But she is flirting with her own adult level problems.
The Catholic boy James is slightly older and lives within sight of Mungo's residence. But he goes to a completely different school. This feels like Romeo/Juliet with these young lovers. There are even lines from Shakespeare in here (hint).
The tension in this book oscillates greatly as the stories unfold and then converge. I wanted to keep reading to 'find out', yet I also wanted to simply stop and freeze the story when happiness appeared. The foreboding with very simple hints regularly lets you know that this will not be a simple ending.
If you see my favorites, you'll know I like these tough serious/real-feeling gay themed books. (Lie With Me, Swimming in the Dark, In Memoriam, Cleanness, Hearts Invisible Furies, In The Absence of Men, Song of Achilles, Giovanni's Room, The Charioteer, The End of Eddy, Call Me By Your Name). This book ranks right with these. My tears were very few in this book as the scenes are tough and Mungo also doesn't shed tears (the way boys/men are taught not to).
This is a solid 5 for me.
Be careful with some triggers: alcoholism. mid-teen rape. violent fight descriptions, leading to deaths.
I will surely buy a hard-copy of this book. I now want to read Stuart's "Shuggie Bain". And maybe now I'm ready for "A Little Life" as I saw one reviewer comment that the characters here in Mungo are thrown 'under the bus' here more than in A Little Life. Maybe I can survive all those soul-crushing reviews I've read there.
~300 Vocab words
Definitions at: https://waterfall007.wordpress.com/20...
April 6, 2022
Young Mungo is a heartbreaking tale and tender love story of a sensitive teenager, brutalised by his origins and the society he lives in. Fifteen year old Mungo lives in poverty in a Glasgow housing scheme with his single mum and older sister Jodie. His father was killed on the streets in the ongoing violent and senseless warfare between protestant and catholic gangs. His mother was only a teenager herself when her first child, Mungo’s older brother Hamish was born, and unable to cope on her own with three youngsters took to the bottle to numb her pain. Never a good mother, she neglects Jodie and Mungo, leaving them alone for weeks at a time with no food in the house while she spends any money she has on alcohol and pursues her latest love interest. Despite all this Mungo loves her dearly, even though the more pragmatic Jodie tells him he should see her for what she is.
Mungo is a lovely soft-hearted boy who helps out his neighbours. He is artistic and not interested in sport or fighting, but now that he is nearing sixteen, the age he can leave school, pressure is being put on him to harden up and become more like his brother. Hamish is the violent leader of the local protestant gang that steals and damages property. He also deals drugs and at nineteen is already a father. Jodie, determined to go to University and thus break away from the entrenched poverty and early motherhood that awaits girls her age in the housing schemes, tries to steer him away from falling into a life of sectarian violence and think about a future career in art and design. However, when Mungo falls in love with James, a gentle, motherless catholic boy who breeds pigeons, his mother sends him away on a camping trip with two men she barely knows from her AA group. Mungo’s world will never be the same again.
I haven’t yet read Stuart’s Booker prize winning novel Shuggie Bain, but this appears to be set in a similar setting with similar themes of post-Thatcher poverty in 1990s Glasgow, single families, alcoholism and violence. The focus of this novel is the adolescent Mungo rather than the younger Shuggie and his mother Agnes. The writing is evocative and liberally sprinkled with colourful similes and descriptions and the authentic dialogue very much captures the mood of the time. The main characters are so well drawn we would recognise them in an instant and even the minor characters have an authentic individuality about them. In many ways this is a hard book to read and review, as what happens to young Mungo is painful and depressing. The ending is particularly dark and disturbing and left me feeling sad, but really hoping that there will be some light in both Mungo’s and James’ futures after all they have endured and lost.
With thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for a copy to read
Mungo is a lovely soft-hearted boy who helps out his neighbours. He is artistic and not interested in sport or fighting, but now that he is nearing sixteen, the age he can leave school, pressure is being put on him to harden up and become more like his brother. Hamish is the violent leader of the local protestant gang that steals and damages property. He also deals drugs and at nineteen is already a father. Jodie, determined to go to University and thus break away from the entrenched poverty and early motherhood that awaits girls her age in the housing schemes, tries to steer him away from falling into a life of sectarian violence and think about a future career in art and design. However, when Mungo falls in love with James, a gentle, motherless catholic boy who breeds pigeons, his mother sends him away on a camping trip with two men she barely knows from her AA group. Mungo’s world will never be the same again.
I haven’t yet read Stuart’s Booker prize winning novel Shuggie Bain, but this appears to be set in a similar setting with similar themes of post-Thatcher poverty in 1990s Glasgow, single families, alcoholism and violence. The focus of this novel is the adolescent Mungo rather than the younger Shuggie and his mother Agnes. The writing is evocative and liberally sprinkled with colourful similes and descriptions and the authentic dialogue very much captures the mood of the time. The main characters are so well drawn we would recognise them in an instant and even the minor characters have an authentic individuality about them. In many ways this is a hard book to read and review, as what happens to young Mungo is painful and depressing. The ending is particularly dark and disturbing and left me feeling sad, but really hoping that there will be some light in both Mungo’s and James’ futures after all they have endured and lost.
With thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for a copy to read
April 5, 2022
Fifteen-year-old Mungo shows the kind of vulnerability that makes people want to cradle him — or crush him. He’s the tender Scottish hero of Douglas Stuart’s moving new novel, “Young Mungo.” It’s a tale of romantic and sexual awakening punctuated by horrific violence. Amid all its suffering, Mungo’s story makes two things strikingly clear: 1) Being named after the patron saint of Glasgow offers no protection, and 2) Stuart writes like an angel.
Few novelists have ever ascended so quickly, but the suddenness of Stuart’s success belies years of struggle. His debut novel, “Shuggie Bain,” was rejected by dozens of publishers before Grove Atlantic finally recognized the manuscript’s genius. It went on to win the Booker Prize in 2020, propelling the Scottish American writer to worldwide fame.
Now, just two years later, Stuart is back with another masterful family drama set in the economic ruin of Glasgow after Margaret Thatcher’s devastating reign. This is a hopeless realm of demolished industries, substance abuse and generational poverty. As in “Shuggie Bain,” the protagonist is a boy, the youngest of three siblings being raised by an alcoholic mother. But if Stuart has not departed much from the scaffolding of his debut novel, he has managed to produce a story with a very different shape and pace. . . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Few novelists have ever ascended so quickly, but the suddenness of Stuart’s success belies years of struggle. His debut novel, “Shuggie Bain,” was rejected by dozens of publishers before Grove Atlantic finally recognized the manuscript’s genius. It went on to win the Booker Prize in 2020, propelling the Scottish American writer to worldwide fame.
Now, just two years later, Stuart is back with another masterful family drama set in the economic ruin of Glasgow after Margaret Thatcher’s devastating reign. This is a hopeless realm of demolished industries, substance abuse and generational poverty. As in “Shuggie Bain,” the protagonist is a boy, the youngest of three siblings being raised by an alcoholic mother. But if Stuart has not departed much from the scaffolding of his debut novel, he has managed to produce a story with a very different shape and pace. . . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Read
May 4, 2023Boli
Shelved as 'dnf'
April 13, 2022I attempted this several times before my netgalley arc expired, but it sadly wasn't to be. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong because I loved Shuggie Bain and, in many ways, this is a very similar kind of story with a similar tone.
In fact... could that be it?
Maybe Shuggie Bain ate up my quota of misery and gloom for the next ten years or so. All I know is that I really struggled to get into this. Maybe I'll try again when I'm in a different mood.
In fact... could that be it?
Maybe Shuggie Bain ate up my quota of misery and gloom for the next ten years or so. All I know is that I really struggled to get into this. Maybe I'll try again when I'm in a different mood.
May 10, 2022
5★
“Nothing he did seemed to make her happy. He had been worrying her heart lately, which he knew because she had told him so. He had tried not to laugh when she had said it, but all he could picture was her heart walking around the living room in her chest and folding a white hanky in agitation.”
Mungo is not Shuggie Bain, grown up, although Mungo’s mother is an alcoholic and they live in Glasgow. Mungo is the youngest of Maureen’s three kids, taller than both his violent older brother Hamish and his loving, caring sister, Jodie. He is also more appealingly attractive, the kind of lad that women want to mother.
“Where the freckles and the sallowness looked slightly grubby on her [Jodie] and Hamish, on Mungo it looked so creamy that you wanted to take a spoon to him.”
Of course, that makes him a perfect target for Hamish and the other louts of Glasgow’s East End. When the book opens, Mungo is getting on a bus with two questionable-looking men, heading off on a fishing trip up north somewhere. He’s sixteen but looks much younger. His mother is waving good-bye from the window.
“She fluttered her painted fingers and shooed him away. Go!’”
The story alternates between May (sometime in the 1990s) and January, a few months before, the period which obviously leads up to his being sent off camping to toughen up.
“’Terrible business that. Yer mammy telt us all about that mess ye got yourself into with those dirty Fenian bastards. Catholics, man. Butter widnae melt.’
Mungo had been trying not to think about it.
‘Dinnae worry,’ grinned Gallowgate. ‘We’ll get you away frae that scheme. We’ll have a proper boy’s weekend. Make a man out of you yet, eh?’”
His mother, Maureen, is known as Mo-Maw, short for Monday-Thursday Maureen, which is her Alcoholic Anonymous name. She met these two men at AA, and like them, she still drinks all the time. Gallowgate is a former inmate of Barlinnie Prison, while St Christopher is no saint, just Sunday-Thursday Christopher.
Mungo is an anxious boy who picks at his cheek, chews on things for comfort (remote controls, windowsills), and has a nervous tic. He wants to go home, be with his sister, who looks after him and cuddles him. He always hopes his mum will be there, too.
But she disappears for weeks at a time, leaving them with no food and bills piling up. She was in her mid-teens when she had her babies, and she wants to party and be young and single.
In spite of everything, Mungo adores Mo-Maw (as Shuggie Bain did his mother), and when drink changes her, he’s the one who cleans her up and gets her to bed. The kids then refer to her as Tattie-bogle, which is the Scottish word for scarecrow.
“But sometimes Mo-Maw could get so far in the drink that she would become another woman entirely, another creature altogether. The first sign was how her skin grew slack, like her real face was sliding off to reveal this strange woman who lurked underneath. Mungo and his brother and sister called this slack version of her ‘Tattie-bogle’, like some heartless, shambling scarecrow. No matter how her children stuffed her with their love or tried to prop her up and gather her back together, she took in all their care and attention and felt as hollow as ever.”
Hamish is scary and mercurial. One minute, Mungo’s older brother is warm and companionable, and the next, he is violent and dangerous. He gives Mungo a knife, and makes him go along to fight the Catholics, both sides throwing bricks and rocks at each other. The knife is just in case. If Mungo’s not bruised from the fights, he’s bruised from Hamish.
After a particularly bad skirmish, Mungo is lying low, away from the eyes of the police patrols.
“There was a quiet, forgotten place behind the tenements, a scrabble of trees that sat between the edge of the motorway and the last row of sooty sandstone.”
He is intrigued by a doocote (dovecote, pigeon loft) across the way. If you’ve every built a cubby house, or a fort, or even just barricaded a ‘hidden’ corner of a room with chairs and blankets, you know that sense of privacy.
“There was a doocot at the far edge of the forgotten grass. A two-storey shelter, six feet by six feet, and fourteen feet tall. The rectangular turret looked hastily put up from old, corrugated iron, a set of heavy front doors and glossy melamine that came from dismantled cafeteria tables. The whole structure had a tottering angle but was sturdy enough; each seam was nailed or soldered firmly shut, and the roof was sealed from the rain with thick tarpaper. A sliding skylight was fixed on to this roof, and over this skylight was a wire basket that cantilevered and acted as a snap-trap of sorts. Although it was made of scraps, the tower had a house-proud feel.”
He eventually meets the ‘owner’, James. He’s a quiet lad who lives across from Mungo’s part of the scheme (housing scheme) and traps and raises pigeons. I never knew about these towers, cobbled together from scrap tin and timber to house pigeons. No planning regulations, apparently.
A Glasgow doocot
They remind me of the towers that were built centuries ago by the Scottish clans to defend their lands, although those are handsome brick and stone structures, many still standing today.
Smallholm Tower, 15th century
The boys become friends, and when Mungo later realises James is Catholic, he keeps it secret. Both boys are lonely, neither has had any real friends, and as they gradually grow closer, they begin to feel a romantic attachment which takes them both by surprise.
James’s father is a macho oil-rigger who makes good money and is out at sea for weeks at a time, so the boys are left on their own with plenty of food. For Mungo, it’s a far cry from the empty cupboards and threats from Hamish at home.
There are many wonderful characters, including kindly neighbours who love Mungo. There is also politics. A teacher tries to explain to Jodie’s class the reason for the violence and despair.
“The English government had been frustrated with the growing power of the trade unions, tired of subsidizing Scotland to compete with cheaper foreign labour. He had said that it was catastrophic to put several generations of the same families out of work: men who had been bred to shape steel would be left to rust, whole communities that grew up around shipbuilding would have no paying jobs.”
The fishing trip in May is suspenseful and terrifying and made for compelling reading.
Yes, it seems cold and uncomfortable and discouraging, but at the same time, there is warmth and love and hope. I heard the author say that the anxiety and chewing on things (including remotes!) comes from his own experience. He sure does understand all of these people, and somehow, he escaped, so that gives me hope that it is possible.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the copy for review.
I loved it.
Incidentally, if you stumble over the Scottish words, here’s a handy resource.
https://stooryduster.co.uk/scottish-w...
“Nothing he did seemed to make her happy. He had been worrying her heart lately, which he knew because she had told him so. He had tried not to laugh when she had said it, but all he could picture was her heart walking around the living room in her chest and folding a white hanky in agitation.”
Mungo is not Shuggie Bain, grown up, although Mungo’s mother is an alcoholic and they live in Glasgow. Mungo is the youngest of Maureen’s three kids, taller than both his violent older brother Hamish and his loving, caring sister, Jodie. He is also more appealingly attractive, the kind of lad that women want to mother.
“Where the freckles and the sallowness looked slightly grubby on her [Jodie] and Hamish, on Mungo it looked so creamy that you wanted to take a spoon to him.”
Of course, that makes him a perfect target for Hamish and the other louts of Glasgow’s East End. When the book opens, Mungo is getting on a bus with two questionable-looking men, heading off on a fishing trip up north somewhere. He’s sixteen but looks much younger. His mother is waving good-bye from the window.
“She fluttered her painted fingers and shooed him away. Go!’”
The story alternates between May (sometime in the 1990s) and January, a few months before, the period which obviously leads up to his being sent off camping to toughen up.
“’Terrible business that. Yer mammy telt us all about that mess ye got yourself into with those dirty Fenian bastards. Catholics, man. Butter widnae melt.’
Mungo had been trying not to think about it.
‘Dinnae worry,’ grinned Gallowgate. ‘We’ll get you away frae that scheme. We’ll have a proper boy’s weekend. Make a man out of you yet, eh?’”
His mother, Maureen, is known as Mo-Maw, short for Monday-Thursday Maureen, which is her Alcoholic Anonymous name. She met these two men at AA, and like them, she still drinks all the time. Gallowgate is a former inmate of Barlinnie Prison, while St Christopher is no saint, just Sunday-Thursday Christopher.
Mungo is an anxious boy who picks at his cheek, chews on things for comfort (remote controls, windowsills), and has a nervous tic. He wants to go home, be with his sister, who looks after him and cuddles him. He always hopes his mum will be there, too.
But she disappears for weeks at a time, leaving them with no food and bills piling up. She was in her mid-teens when she had her babies, and she wants to party and be young and single.
In spite of everything, Mungo adores Mo-Maw (as Shuggie Bain did his mother), and when drink changes her, he’s the one who cleans her up and gets her to bed. The kids then refer to her as Tattie-bogle, which is the Scottish word for scarecrow.
“But sometimes Mo-Maw could get so far in the drink that she would become another woman entirely, another creature altogether. The first sign was how her skin grew slack, like her real face was sliding off to reveal this strange woman who lurked underneath. Mungo and his brother and sister called this slack version of her ‘Tattie-bogle’, like some heartless, shambling scarecrow. No matter how her children stuffed her with their love or tried to prop her up and gather her back together, she took in all their care and attention and felt as hollow as ever.”
Hamish is scary and mercurial. One minute, Mungo’s older brother is warm and companionable, and the next, he is violent and dangerous. He gives Mungo a knife, and makes him go along to fight the Catholics, both sides throwing bricks and rocks at each other. The knife is just in case. If Mungo’s not bruised from the fights, he’s bruised from Hamish.
After a particularly bad skirmish, Mungo is lying low, away from the eyes of the police patrols.
“There was a quiet, forgotten place behind the tenements, a scrabble of trees that sat between the edge of the motorway and the last row of sooty sandstone.”
He is intrigued by a doocote (dovecote, pigeon loft) across the way. If you’ve every built a cubby house, or a fort, or even just barricaded a ‘hidden’ corner of a room with chairs and blankets, you know that sense of privacy.
“There was a doocot at the far edge of the forgotten grass. A two-storey shelter, six feet by six feet, and fourteen feet tall. The rectangular turret looked hastily put up from old, corrugated iron, a set of heavy front doors and glossy melamine that came from dismantled cafeteria tables. The whole structure had a tottering angle but was sturdy enough; each seam was nailed or soldered firmly shut, and the roof was sealed from the rain with thick tarpaper. A sliding skylight was fixed on to this roof, and over this skylight was a wire basket that cantilevered and acted as a snap-trap of sorts. Although it was made of scraps, the tower had a house-proud feel.”
He eventually meets the ‘owner’, James. He’s a quiet lad who lives across from Mungo’s part of the scheme (housing scheme) and traps and raises pigeons. I never knew about these towers, cobbled together from scrap tin and timber to house pigeons. No planning regulations, apparently.
A Glasgow doocot
They remind me of the towers that were built centuries ago by the Scottish clans to defend their lands, although those are handsome brick and stone structures, many still standing today.
Smallholm Tower, 15th century
The boys become friends, and when Mungo later realises James is Catholic, he keeps it secret. Both boys are lonely, neither has had any real friends, and as they gradually grow closer, they begin to feel a romantic attachment which takes them both by surprise.
James’s father is a macho oil-rigger who makes good money and is out at sea for weeks at a time, so the boys are left on their own with plenty of food. For Mungo, it’s a far cry from the empty cupboards and threats from Hamish at home.
There are many wonderful characters, including kindly neighbours who love Mungo. There is also politics. A teacher tries to explain to Jodie’s class the reason for the violence and despair.
“The English government had been frustrated with the growing power of the trade unions, tired of subsidizing Scotland to compete with cheaper foreign labour. He had said that it was catastrophic to put several generations of the same families out of work: men who had been bred to shape steel would be left to rust, whole communities that grew up around shipbuilding would have no paying jobs.”
The fishing trip in May is suspenseful and terrifying and made for compelling reading.
Yes, it seems cold and uncomfortable and discouraging, but at the same time, there is warmth and love and hope. I heard the author say that the anxiety and chewing on things (including remotes!) comes from his own experience. He sure does understand all of these people, and somehow, he escaped, so that gives me hope that it is possible.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the copy for review.
I loved it.
Incidentally, if you stumble over the Scottish words, here’s a handy resource.
https://stooryduster.co.uk/scottish-w...
October 2, 2022
As I turned the last page of this wonderful book, my heart was full. Douglas Stuart has proved that the magnificent Shuggie Bain was no fluke. If I read a better novel than Young Mungo this year, I'll be amazed.
Again the story is set among the mean streets of Glasgow, but this time we're in the 1990s. Mungo Hamilton is 15, the youngest of three Protestant children. His mother Mo-Maw is an alcoholic and rarely seen at their small flat. Instead, he is raised by his sister Jodie, only a year older but with a steeliness and wisdom that belies her youth. Eldest brother Hamish is feared gang leader who spends most of his time organizing battles against the hated Catholics. Mungo is lost, but he does make a friend in James, a young neighbour who races pigeons. The time they spend together is an ocean of calm amid the stormy seas of Mungo's everyday life. Intertwined with the main plot is an account of a fishing trip that Mungo is sent on with two older men, and a sense of foreboding is hard to ignore.
It's a long time since I've felt such sympathy for a fictional character. Mungo is so confused and anxious - he even has a tic that makes his face twitch when he gets stressed. He yearns for compassion from Mo-Maw, treats her like a queen and gets nothing in return. When his friendship with James looks like it might turn into something more, you're absolutely rooting for him. If anybody deserves a shot at happiness it's poor Mungo, a caring, thoughtful boy who has been dealt such a bad hand.
I also loved how well the lives of secondary characters are fleshed out. Jodie dreams of escaping to university but an affair with an older man threatens to scupper her plans. Chickie Calhoun is a gay man who lives alone and has to deal with horrible slurs thrown his way every day, but he shows Mungo more kindness that some of his family ever have. And in a standout chapter, Mungo and Jodie come to the rescue of a neighbour who is being battered by her husband one night, and end up stunned by her reaction.
There is such an ominous tone to the story and you can't help thinking that this won't end well for our young protagonist. But you read on hoping for a chink of light in the darkness of his miserable life. Douglas Stuart is masterful storyteller and he has created an unforgettable character in Mungo. It's a powerful, heartbreaking tale from one of the very best writers around.
Favourite Quotes:
"The man was trembling slightly. Years spent hiding from daylight in dark pubs had given him the nervous reactions of a whippet pushed out into the snow, and he had the small darting eyes and long twitching limbs of a mistreated dog."
"Beyond these sat the broken promises of Sighthill. The high-rise towers were only twenty years old and were already in a state of disrepair. They were the tallest buildings Mungo had ever seen. The tops of them disappeared into the dense clouds, like a stairway to somewhere above the endless rain, or like a strut trying to keep the ceiling of dark cumulus from collapsing and suffocating the entire city."
"Jodie felt the floor tilt underneath her. Like a gable end slated for demolition, the front facade of her fell away and the private contents of her life rolled out. She was being torn down, and every mismatched bed sheet in her mind was to be exposed for all to see."
"She had asked for violence out of a gentle soul and it made her feel like she had trampled a patch of fresh snow."
"Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness; he simply couldn’t help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced too much, so that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, like hers had, like Hamish’s had. Yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up."
Again the story is set among the mean streets of Glasgow, but this time we're in the 1990s. Mungo Hamilton is 15, the youngest of three Protestant children. His mother Mo-Maw is an alcoholic and rarely seen at their small flat. Instead, he is raised by his sister Jodie, only a year older but with a steeliness and wisdom that belies her youth. Eldest brother Hamish is feared gang leader who spends most of his time organizing battles against the hated Catholics. Mungo is lost, but he does make a friend in James, a young neighbour who races pigeons. The time they spend together is an ocean of calm amid the stormy seas of Mungo's everyday life. Intertwined with the main plot is an account of a fishing trip that Mungo is sent on with two older men, and a sense of foreboding is hard to ignore.
It's a long time since I've felt such sympathy for a fictional character. Mungo is so confused and anxious - he even has a tic that makes his face twitch when he gets stressed. He yearns for compassion from Mo-Maw, treats her like a queen and gets nothing in return. When his friendship with James looks like it might turn into something more, you're absolutely rooting for him. If anybody deserves a shot at happiness it's poor Mungo, a caring, thoughtful boy who has been dealt such a bad hand.
I also loved how well the lives of secondary characters are fleshed out. Jodie dreams of escaping to university but an affair with an older man threatens to scupper her plans. Chickie Calhoun is a gay man who lives alone and has to deal with horrible slurs thrown his way every day, but he shows Mungo more kindness that some of his family ever have. And in a standout chapter, Mungo and Jodie come to the rescue of a neighbour who is being battered by her husband one night, and end up stunned by her reaction.
There is such an ominous tone to the story and you can't help thinking that this won't end well for our young protagonist. But you read on hoping for a chink of light in the darkness of his miserable life. Douglas Stuart is masterful storyteller and he has created an unforgettable character in Mungo. It's a powerful, heartbreaking tale from one of the very best writers around.
Favourite Quotes:
"The man was trembling slightly. Years spent hiding from daylight in dark pubs had given him the nervous reactions of a whippet pushed out into the snow, and he had the small darting eyes and long twitching limbs of a mistreated dog."
"Beyond these sat the broken promises of Sighthill. The high-rise towers were only twenty years old and were already in a state of disrepair. They were the tallest buildings Mungo had ever seen. The tops of them disappeared into the dense clouds, like a stairway to somewhere above the endless rain, or like a strut trying to keep the ceiling of dark cumulus from collapsing and suffocating the entire city."
"Jodie felt the floor tilt underneath her. Like a gable end slated for demolition, the front facade of her fell away and the private contents of her life rolled out. She was being torn down, and every mismatched bed sheet in her mind was to be exposed for all to see."
"She had asked for violence out of a gentle soul and it made her feel like she had trampled a patch of fresh snow."
"Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness; he simply couldn’t help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced too much, so that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, like hers had, like Hamish’s had. Yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up."
July 15, 2022
Mungo Hamilton is a fifteen year old boy in Glasgow in the late 1980s/early 1990s. He is the youngest of three children and lives with his mother, Maureen, who is an alcoholic and often leaves Mungo to be taken care of by his sister, Jodie. Mungo's father died when Maureen was pregnant with him, so the closest father figure in his life is his older brother, Hamish, the leader of their neighborhood's Protestant gang. One day Mungo meets a Catholic boy around his age named James, and quickly the two start developing feelings for one another. The novel begins with Mungo being sent away with two older men from Maureen's AA meetings for a camping & fishing trip "to make a man out of him", and the novel vacillates between scenes of the trip and flashbacks to Mungo & James's blossoming romance.
The amount of dread that Stuart builds in this novel rivals true suspsense/thriller novels. The absolute grimness of Mungo's life, the streets he and his brother and their gang walk, his forced maturity at the hands of a young and uninvolved mother, all adds up to something that feels so real it jumps off the page. These dark moments are broken by the levity and joy that Mungo finds in James, but you know that those bright spots will only last so long. Unfortunately, you feel from the start that nothing good can last too long for young Mungo.
I have to say I was especially impressed by this as I wasn't a huge fan of Stuart's first novel, the Booker Prize-winning Shuggie Bain. In many ways this feels very similar to SB, however where that one felt like an exercise in writing, something that had been worked on for so long it lost a bit of its life, this felt ripe with experience. Mungo is one of the most endearing, sympathetic and vivid characters I've read about in a long time. That makes the events of this novel all the more powerful. You are rooting for him so badly, that every misstep or hiccup in his life deeply affect the reader.
I'm also happy to say that despite the bleakness that permeates the novel, it's not without hope! I really loved the ending, and the moments that Mungo shares with his downstairs neighbor, a closeted gay man who is ridiculed by the community but whom Mungo comes to understand more deeply as the novel goes on.
I would be shocked if this isn't longlisted for the Booker Prize this year. But even if it isn't, I'm glad to have read it, especially considering I wasn't super keen on picking it up due to my feelings about his first novel. Glad I stumbled upon it at the library and decided to give it a go.
The amount of dread that Stuart builds in this novel rivals true suspsense/thriller novels. The absolute grimness of Mungo's life, the streets he and his brother and their gang walk, his forced maturity at the hands of a young and uninvolved mother, all adds up to something that feels so real it jumps off the page. These dark moments are broken by the levity and joy that Mungo finds in James, but you know that those bright spots will only last so long. Unfortunately, you feel from the start that nothing good can last too long for young Mungo.
I have to say I was especially impressed by this as I wasn't a huge fan of Stuart's first novel, the Booker Prize-winning Shuggie Bain. In many ways this feels very similar to SB, however where that one felt like an exercise in writing, something that had been worked on for so long it lost a bit of its life, this felt ripe with experience. Mungo is one of the most endearing, sympathetic and vivid characters I've read about in a long time. That makes the events of this novel all the more powerful. You are rooting for him so badly, that every misstep or hiccup in his life deeply affect the reader.
I'm also happy to say that despite the bleakness that permeates the novel, it's not without hope! I really loved the ending, and the moments that Mungo shares with his downstairs neighbor, a closeted gay man who is ridiculed by the community but whom Mungo comes to understand more deeply as the novel goes on.
I would be shocked if this isn't longlisted for the Booker Prize this year. But even if it isn't, I'm glad to have read it, especially considering I wasn't super keen on picking it up due to my feelings about his first novel. Glad I stumbled upon it at the library and decided to give it a go.
January 17, 2022
Don't mind me slipping in to link this reading vlog where I suffered in real time.
When I read Shuggie Bain I at least thought that there was an attempt at something in the storytelling...
Here... here, I have absolutely no fucking clue what Stuart was attempting to do. The alternating timeline was foolishness, and while at least this time the stories meet up in a place that feels a little worth the time spent reading... it's still not at all something I would recommend to most readers.
Pedophiles, alcoholism, homophobic hate crimes, back alley abortions, domestic violence, statutory rape, and general child neglect are all things that play into the story at one time or another, often at multiple points in the narrative. Once again Stuart presents the reader with two-dimmensional characters, most of which feel ripped from the pages of his first novel with the same motivations and bland characterization...
I don't think that all books need to have a point of view, a stance on a topic, but much like how I felt with the first book when you start stacking trauma on a character like a Jenga tower I do expect there to be some kind of examination of that which can be supported by the text in some way, and I don't feel like that's the case.
Instead it's just a series of bad things happening to a character that I don't care about occasionally interrupted by interludes of characters the reader is even less invested in and in one instance the actual child rapist.
Once again Stuart has penned a book that simply exists, and the litfic girlies are gonna eat it up, but I find this is a meal that lacks real substance.
When I read Shuggie Bain I at least thought that there was an attempt at something in the storytelling...
Here... here, I have absolutely no fucking clue what Stuart was attempting to do. The alternating timeline was foolishness, and while at least this time the stories meet up in a place that feels a little worth the time spent reading... it's still not at all something I would recommend to most readers.
Pedophiles, alcoholism, homophobic hate crimes, back alley abortions, domestic violence, statutory rape, and general child neglect are all things that play into the story at one time or another, often at multiple points in the narrative. Once again Stuart presents the reader with two-dimmensional characters, most of which feel ripped from the pages of his first novel with the same motivations and bland characterization...
I don't think that all books need to have a point of view, a stance on a topic, but much like how I felt with the first book when you start stacking trauma on a character like a Jenga tower I do expect there to be some kind of examination of that which can be supported by the text in some way, and I don't feel like that's the case.
Instead it's just a series of bad things happening to a character that I don't care about occasionally interrupted by interludes of characters the reader is even less invested in and in one instance the actual child rapist.
Once again Stuart has penned a book that simply exists, and the litfic girlies are gonna eat it up, but I find this is a meal that lacks real substance.
February 23, 2024
"Young Mungo" is about alcoholism, rape, abuse, dirt, poverty and love. In this respect, it is a novel that is part of both a naturalistic and a romantic tradition. It is about a Scottish boy, Mungo, who grows up in precarious circumstances in Glasgow in the 1990s and eventually finds himself in an even more precarious situation.
Stuart's descriptions are powerful, genuine and unspoilt. You believe every word he says, even if there are occasionally too many words. The plot level at the lake is a black nightmare. You accompany Mungo, see him fall, but can't catch him. It is as if you are sitting motionless in the cold lake and as you slowly sink, Mungo disappears in a predetermined downward spiral.
At the centre is the concept of untouchable virility. Masculinity is clearly defined: a man has to be tough, strong, he has to fight with others and he is allowed to beat his wife from time to time. Any form of softness is condemned and homosexuality is something unspeakable that may exist in jokes but is unthinkable as a reality.
"Young Mungo" is a terrible novel that inspires hope. It makes us angry and helpless and draws out that empathetic self that often gets lost behind our sensationalism. We follow the protagonist on a tightrope walk along the abyss of nihilism and yet we always see a possible, better future on the distant horizon. To a certain extent, the descriptions and the construction are manipulation; but why shouldn't we allow ourselves to be manipulated if it gives us a sparring partner for our compassion?
Stuart's descriptions are powerful, genuine and unspoilt. You believe every word he says, even if there are occasionally too many words. The plot level at the lake is a black nightmare. You accompany Mungo, see him fall, but can't catch him. It is as if you are sitting motionless in the cold lake and as you slowly sink, Mungo disappears in a predetermined downward spiral.
At the centre is the concept of untouchable virility. Masculinity is clearly defined: a man has to be tough, strong, he has to fight with others and he is allowed to beat his wife from time to time. Any form of softness is condemned and homosexuality is something unspeakable that may exist in jokes but is unthinkable as a reality.
"Young Mungo" is a terrible novel that inspires hope. It makes us angry and helpless and draws out that empathetic self that often gets lost behind our sensationalism. We follow the protagonist on a tightrope walk along the abyss of nihilism and yet we always see a possible, better future on the distant horizon. To a certain extent, the descriptions and the construction are manipulation; but why shouldn't we allow ourselves to be manipulated if it gives us a sparring partner for our compassion?
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