Categories | Literature & Fiction |
Author | Douglas Stuart |
Publisher | Grove Press (April 5, 2022) |
Language | English |
Paperback | 400 pages |
Item Weight | 1.3 pounds |
Dimensions |
6.25 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches |
I. Book introduction
A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart’s first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or forthcoming in forty territories, it has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.
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.
Editorial Reviews
“Young Mungo seals it: Douglas Stuart is a genius . . . A tale of romantic and sexual awakening punctuated by horrific violence. . . . The raw poetry of Stuart’s prose is perfect to catch the open spirit of this handsome boy . . . Stuart quickly proves himself an extraordinarily effective thriller writer. He’s capable of pulling the strings of suspense excruciatingly tight while still sensitively exploring the confused mind of this gentle adolescent trying to make sense of his sexuality . . . But even as Stuart draws these timelines together like a pair of scissors, he creates a little space for Mungo’s future, a little mercy for this buoyant young man.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“[A] bear hug of a new novel . . . It’s a classic Dickensian arc: The unwanted young lad, hoping for better things, is caught up in broader violent schemes and made to choose between the life he wants for himself and the one set out before him . . . But novelists have been flaccidly imitating the 19th century realists for so long that it’s a shock when one carries it out this successfully. Stuart oozes story. Mungo is alive. There is feeling under every word . . . This novel cuts you and then bandages you back up.”—Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times
“The working-class 1980s Glasgow of Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning debut Shuggie Bain is again the setting of his follow-up Young Mungo, and with it come the violence, religious tribalism, economic depression, diehard loyalties and fatalistic humor of the era, all expressed in the crooked poetry of Glaswegian dialect . . . The crafted storylines in Young Mungo develop with purpose and converge explosively, couching all the horror and pathos within a tighter, more gripping reading experience—an impressive advancement, in other words, from an already accomplished author.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“A nuanced and gorgeous heartbreaker of a novel . . . It’s a testament to Stuart’s unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can’t possibly anticipate how very badly—and baroquely—things will turn out. Young Mungo is a suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation. It’s hard to imagine a more disquieting and powerful work of fiction will be published anytime soon about the perils of being different.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“Young Mungo bridges the worlds of Stuart’s earlier novel and stories . . . Stuart writes beautifully, with marvelous attunement to the poetry in the unlovely and the mundane . . . The novel conveys an enveloping sense of place, in part through the wit and musicality of its dialogue.”—Yen Pham,New York Times Book Review
“Young Mungo is a finer novel than its predecessor, offering many of the same pleasures, but with a more sure-footed approach to narrative and a finer grasp of prose. There are sentences here that gleam and shimmer, demanding to be read and reread for their beauty and their truth . . . The way that Stuart builds towards exquisite set pieces, moments in time that take on an almost visionary aspect; the powerful and evocative descriptions of sex and nature in language that soars without ever feeling forced or purple; the manner in which he binds you into the lives of his characters, making even the most brutal and self-interested members of the family somehow not only forgivable, but lovable. I sobbed my way through Shuggie Bain and sobbed again as Young Mungo made its way towards an ending whose inevitability only serves to heighten its tragedy. If the first novel announced Stuart as a novelist of great promise, this confirms him as a prodigious talent.”—Alex Preston, Guardian
“When a romance develops between two teenage boys (one Protestant, one Catholic) in a Glasgow housing project, the danger of discovery is all too real. Like Shuggie Bain, the author’s acclaimed debut, this is a raw, tender and generous story of love and survival in tough circumstances.”—People
“Exhilarating, heartbreaking . . . The book shares a few similarities with Shuggie Bain, but Young Mungo is more brutal, more suspenseful . . . An edgy, relentless urgency. The language is gorgeous, poetic, expertly evoking the dour streets of Glasgow and its people . . . Stuart shows us so much ugliness, but he offers a promise of hope, too. This book will hurt your heart, so reach for that hope.”—Connie Ogle, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The novels share a brutality and a squirmy, claustrophobic evocation of family life. And they offer a world of exquisite detail: If a perfume creator wished to bottle the olfactory landscape of post-Thatcher-era Glasgow, all the necessary ingredients could be found in Stuart’s descriptions of sausage grease, fruity fortified wine, pigeon droppings and store-bought hair bleach . . . There is crazy greatness in Young Mungo.”—Molly Young, New York Times
“A blazing marvel of storytelling, as strong and possibly stronger than his Booker Prize-winning debut . . . As affecting, original, and brilliantly written a novel as any we’ll see in 2022 . . . From political hostilities to personal anguish, Stuart harmonizes his notes, pitch-perfect . . . There’s jazz and bounce in his sentences—his cadences are rollicking, his dialogue often comic—but also a meticulous precision . . . I felt the same frisson as when I read works by other leading innovators, among them Kevin Barry, Hilary Mantel, Arundhati Roy, Ali Smith, and Colson Whitehead.”—Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily
“An excoriating study of how violence begets violence, a devastating story of how the abused and victimized become abusers or aggressors . . . [Stuart’s] writing is so magnificent and his young hero so endearingly, vibrantly alive that we soldier on through Mungo’s saga of endurance, weepingly inspired like watchers of a war zone, aching to assuage the survivor’s ache, yearning to rescue him from the predations of his enemies, his vindictive older brother, and finally his own darker impulses.”—Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
“Across the 800 pages of his two novels, Stuart has been inking a great Hogarthian print, a postmodern Scottish Gin Lane. He can be sardonically funny but he always gets back to scaring the hell out of you and breaking your heart . . . There is right now no novelist writing more powerfully than Douglas Stuart. A strong measure of his success lies in how the reader, while appreciating the artistry of each harrowing scene, continually thinks: Please let it end.”—Thomas Mallon, Air Mail
“Page-turning, beautifully written . . . In a narrative that weaves seamlessly back and forth between the camping trip and Mungo’s life before the trip, Stuart creates a world we can almost feel.”—Deborah Dundas, Toronto Star
“Readers might fear that Stuart has written the same book a second time. In several obvious ways, that is true. But Stuart makes the small differences count, of which the most important is that Mungo is older than Shuggie, and beginning to see in his sexuality not just a source of difference and alienation but a possible route to escape and emancipation . . . The tension of the romance is expertly sustained, as is the sense of the real heroism of being a star-crossed lover in a Jets and Sharks world . . . The risk of sentimentality is always there, as it was in Shuggie Bain. But Young Mungo is a braver book, and more truthful, for his having taken that risk.”—Telegraph
“Richly abundant. It spills over with colourful characters and even more colourful insults. And like a Dickens novel it has a moral vision that’s expansive and serious while being savagely funny.”—Times (UK)
“Stuart’s deft, lyrical prose, and the flicker of hope that remains for Mungo, keep the reader turning the page.”—The Economist
“The Sighthill tenement where Shuggie Bain, Stuart’s Booker Prize–winning debut, unfurled is glimpsed in his follow-up, set in the 1990s in an adjacent neighborhood. You wouldn’t think you’d be eager to return to these harsh, impoverished environs, but again this author creates characters so vivid, dilemmas so heart-rending, and dialogue so brilliant that the whole thing sucks you in like a vacuum cleaner . . . Romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful. What a writer.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The astonishing sophomore effort from Booker Prize winner Stuart details a teen’s hard life in north Glasgow in the post-Thatcher years . . . Stuart’s writing is stellar . . . He’s too fine a storyteller to go for a sentimental ending, and the final act leaves the reader gutted. This is unbearably sad, more so because the reader comes to cherish the characters their creator has brought to life. It’s a sucker punch to the heart.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A searing, gorgeously written portrait of a young gay boy trying to be true to himself in a place and time that demands conformity to social and gender rules . . . Stuart’s tale could be set anywhere that poverty, socioeconomic inequality, or class struggles exist, which is nearly everywhere. But it is also about the narrowness and failure of vision in a place where individuals cannot imagine a better life, where people have never been outside their own neighborhood . . . Stuart’s prize-winning, best-selling debut, Shuggie Bain, ensures great enthusiasm for his second novel of young, dangerous love.”—Booklist (starred review)
“After the splendid Shuggie Bain, Stuart continues his examination of 1980s Glaswegian working-class life and a son’s attachment to an alcohol-ravaged mother, with results as good yet distinctly different . . . In language crisper and more direct than Shuggie Bain’s, if still spiked with startling similes, Stuart heightens his exploration of the sibling bond and the inexplicable hatred between Glasgow’s Protestants and Catholics, while contrasting Mungo’s tenderly conveyed queer awakening with the awful counterpart of sexual violence. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal(starred review)
“Readers will be happy to learn that Stuart’s follow-up, Young Mungo, is even stronger than his first book . . . A marvelous feat of storytelling, a mix of tender emotion and grisly violence that finds humanity in even the most fraught circumstances.”—BookPage (starred review)
“Stuart shines in familiar territory, writing profoundly about love, brutality, strength and courage.”—Newsweek
“Exploring themes of religious conflict, family tension, and the ever-present danger of attempting to live an authentic life, Stuart writes with the same power and economy of language he displayed in his debut. With characters that are exquisitely drawn and a story you won’t be able to put down, this love story goes far beyond the conventional romance.”—BuzzFeed
“Another triumph . . . With a gentleness that defies the hard-scrap poverty and social order around him, Mungo is a character you root for; Young Mungo feels both cinematic and so intimate you don’t want it to end.”—Amazon Book Review, “Editors’ Picks”
“Prepare your hearts, for Douglas Stuart is back. After the extraordinary success of Shuggie Bain, his second novel, Young Mungo, is another beautiful and moving book, a gay Romeo and Juliet set in the brutal world of Glasgow’s housing estates.”—Observer
“I wasn’t sure Young Mungo could live up to Shuggie Bain, but it surpasses it. Deeply harrowing but gently infused with hope and love. And so exquisitely written. It’s a joy to watch, in real time, as Douglas Stuart takes his place as one of the greats of Scottish literature.”—Nicola Sturgeon
“Few novels are as gutsy and gut-wrenching as Young Mungo in its depiction of a teenage boy who finds love amid family dysfunction, community conflict and the truly terrible predations of adults. Vividly realised and emotionally intense, this scorching novel is an urgent addition to the new canon of unsung stories.”—Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
“Some novels can be admired, others enjoyed. But it is a rare thing to find a story so engrossing, bittersweet and beautiful that you do not so much read it, as experience it. It is this quality Young Mungo possesses—an intense, lovely, brutal thing. Stuart is a masterful storyteller.”—Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of April 2022: Douglas Stuart’s debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize in 2020, and two years later, he’s back with another triumph. Young Mungo follows a young Scottish boy who can’t quite control his face as he navigates life with his drunk mother, his brutal gang-leader older brother, his loving sister, and finding friendship—at first—and then more, with a boy named James. With a gentleness that defies the hard-scrap poverty social order around him, Mungo is a character you root for as he dodges the hate and violence of 1990’s Glasgow. Cinematic, intimate, emotionally provocative, Stuart is a master of fiction and exploring just how dangerous love can be. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
About Douglas Stuart
Douglas Stuart is a Scottish-American writer. He is the author of two novels, Young Mungo, and, Shuggie Bain.
His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. It won the Book of The Year at the British Book Awards and The Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It was also a finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize, The Kirkus Prize, The Orwell Prize, The Pen Hemingway Award, The McKitterick Prize and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First novel prize.
Young Mungo was a Sunday Times #1 Bestseller. His work has been translated into 39 languages.
His short stories, Found Wanting, and, The Englishman, were published in The New Yorker magazine. His essays on gender, anxiety, and poverty can be found on Lit Hub.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he is a graduate of The Royal College of Art, and since 2000 he has lived and worked in New York City. Prior to being published, he worked for over twenty years as a fashion designer.
https://www.douglasdstuart.com
II. [Reviews] Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
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1. DAVID review Young Mungo
“Young Mungo” Powerful storytelling that hits you in so many different ways.
First off, I’ll mention that I live in the US, and found I struggled with understanding all the Irish colloquialisiams as well as the definitions of many Irish words. I would have definitely enjoyed this book even more if I was more familiar with Irish culture. The book is devastatingly sad in some places and I found myself reading faster to avoid breaking down completely. The book screams for a sequel that hopefully makes some sense of all the tragedy.
2. LIT SENSE review Young Mungo
“Young Mungo” Goes on the shelf reserved for excellence.
This is such good writing that it has made me want to write. It helped me to see life events more clearly, sharply and to write about those events with greater acuity. Isn’t that what good writing does?
I have a place on the book shelves in my study where I put books that have stuck with me: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Buechner’s The Sacred Journey, Norman Maclean’s, Flannery O’Connor’s stories and her The Habit of Being. Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo will go on that shelf.
3. SASCOT review Young Mungo
Shuggie Bain, the author’s first novel of life for a young man in Glasgow was pretty relentless in its depiction of the deprivation that existed within the working class of this great city as unemployment and decay set in. Young Mungo takes matters to another level, with a cast of characters that would be enough to send any young teenager into a permanent state of trauma. Will the author write a sequel to tell us if Mungo makes it into the adult world undamaged ? Be warned that despite Mungo being a sweet boy, the cast of this book are certainly not. I have taken a star away because I feel that the misery, the violence, the alcoholism of his mother, the dirt, the ugliness of the whole story are over written, stretching the credible beyond the reasonable.
4. ANDREA review Young Mungo
“Young Mungo” Brilliant and brutal
How can a book be so desolate, heartbreaking and bleak yet so beautiful, vivid and gripping?
Young Mungo lives on a Glasgow council estate surrounded by poverty, sectarianism, toxic masculinity and violence. He loves his alcoholic mum too much, fears his gang-leader brother and idolises his sister who just wants to escape this hopeless life.
Two timelines are skilfully woven together: Mungo’s life in Glasgow and a fishing trip his mother sends him on with 2 strangers she’s met at AA.
It’s all so beautifully written – the lyrical prose, the real characters, great dialogue. It deals with trauma, abuse, and brutality but soaring through it, is the hopeful love of Mungo and James, and the ties which bind us all together.
Gritty, angry and raw; it’s the saddest most beautiful thing. Read this book!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.
I also bought my own copy!
5. DOUG review Young Mungo
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.
6. GERHARD review Young Mungo
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.
7. RICHARD DERUS review Young Mungo
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.
8. ELYSE WALTERS review Young Mungo
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!
9. CAROLYN review Young Mungo
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
10. KRISTINE review Young Mungo
I was approved for the Audio 🎧 version of this book. I know I am supposed to just rate that and I did not yet have the e-book. I just could not do it. The narrator, Chris Reilly had such a heavy accent I could not follow this book. I was just struggling to hear what was being said and piecing the book together. Douglas Stuart is an excellent writer and I love his beautiful writing style. I knew I was missing most of this. So, I never like to review late, even a day past publication, but I had requested my library purchase this book, in case Grove Atlantic did not get a chance to look at my NetGalley request for the book. So, I waited. My library always purchases the book requested. I did get the book in the afternoon on 4/5.
This made all the difference. I really loved Mungo. He is a young person, just 15, but he is such a decent person. He is growing up in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1980’s. It is a place where violence and machismo rule the day. His brother is the leader of this mentality. He is part of a gang that looks to take down Catholics, commit crimes, bully, deal drugs and use drugs. He is not a brother that is going to help Mungo do well in life. He is going to make life difficult for Mungo until he bends to his will. Only, Mungo’s sister Jodie is always there for him. She is smart and loves Mungo. She pretty much raises him, as their Mom is an alcoholic and never around. Yet, even with all this, Mungo can’t help but love his Mo-Maw. He just exudes a well of goodness.
Mungo meets James and finds love. It is pure and straight from the heart. Both want the best for each other. Each is the type that knows life is not easy for them since one of the worst things is to be a ‘Poofster’, yet each yearns for connection and it is transformative. Mungo has grown up around neglect and violence, yet he does not yearn to be tough, mean, or violent. You want him to have goodness in his life. I related to him so much, even though our backgrounds are quite different. It is difficult to be different, but it is especially difficult for Mungo to escape it since he doesn’t have parents to guide him or help get him started in life. He just wants a simple and decent life. That it is so difficult because of the attitude of those around him, does not of course mean anything is wrong with Mungo. What should be simple, to have your first love affair is not at all. So, I think most will route for Mungo and love this book. It is masterfully written. It is sad at times, but worth the effort to get to the best parts. It is raw, crass, cruel, but is it also honest and true. I highly recommend this book.
The audio 🎧 version is just too difficult to follow. This is just too good and rich of a book to give this book a bad review due to a very poor narration choice and think audio would be difficult to follow for this book. I think this will turn people off from the book.
So, thank you NetGalley, Douglas Stuart, and RB Media and Recorded Books for an Audio copy of this book. Goodreads does not even have an Audio choice available, which is probably for the best. I would rate the Audio Book 2* at best.
This is a book that I think should be nominated for awards and also enjoyed by many, it is that good. I just wanted to read it and am glad I waited a day and did.
III. [Quote] Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
The best book quotes from Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
“There were rows of teeth marks on the windowsill, perfect little half-moons of anxiety.”
“Mungo pulled his finger off the rusted nail. “I’m glad you are fixed, James. You’ve worked hard to get better. You deserve it.” “I’m not fixed, Mungo. Ah’m just a liar.”
“James sat forward and kissed him. It was all so familiar now. They had moved beyond the clumsy petting and munching. Mungo would stop frequently to apologize, he felt so inept, and James would cradle his face and guide Mungo’s lips back to his. Now their kisses were soft and tender and offered without the fear of refusal. A kiss lasted hours. They lay with their mouths together and Mungo cupped his nose in the divot of James’s cheek, and then they led each other in a silent ramble, one would change the direction and the other would follow, over and over until an arm went dead, or the microwave pinged. A hand might slip under a T-shirt but it never dared to do anything else. Mungo knew he wanted to spend his life doing this, just kissing this one boy. There was no need to rush.”
“The pictures aroused him. Sometimes – when Jodie was in bed, and Hamish was sleeping at Sammy-Jo’s – he would take his brother’s stiff magazine full of buttery soft women. He liked the spreads with men in them the best and so he folded the page, turned the women to the back, and gave them a little rest.”
“But how come Morrissey didnae think there was panic on the streets of Glasgow? There’s plenty of fuckin’ panic here.”
“Cheer up. I love you, Mungo Hamilton.”
“Christ’s sake, Mungo. You must be steamin’. Have you forgotten what it’s like out there? If they knew, they would stab us! Rip us from balls to chin just for something to talk about down the pub.”
“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.”
“Well, they’re aw at it. It’s what us boys do when we’re alone. A bit of fun. ’Asides, it’s like a tradition to some folk. You’re jist no supposed to mention it when you’re poor, but when ye’re rich, haw, haw, haw. It’s what all they posh boys do the gether. Oxford is full of it. Aw they boarding schools. They all love a bit o’ casual buggering down there.”
“I learnt how to start a fire. I learnt how to put bait on a hook.” “See!” Mo-Maw sounded like she was relieved. “That’s what ah telt our Jodie. That’s what ah wanted you to do this for. Masculine pursuits. It’ll make a man out of ye.”
“A sex line for men who like men,’ they said.” James shook his head. “It wasn’t only that. Honest.” Mungo sat up. He felt Jodie turning on the hot tap over him, and he was up to his neck in shame. “Ma da knows. He knows what I am.” James took a punishing gulp of the whisky. “He hasn’t looked at me right since.”
“Listen son, at ma age love is a nuisance of a thing. What ye want is some easy company on a Tuesday night, a bit of help runnin’ the hoose, and if yer lucky a bit of nookie as long as ye can both lie on yer side while ye’re at it.” Mungo didn’t laugh at the joke. Jocky dropped his dout into his mug. “What ye want is an easy life. There’s nothin’ easy about love.”
Book excerpts: Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
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