Review: Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
The extraordinary, powerful second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain, Young Mungo is both a vivid portrayal of working-class life and the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.
Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in a hyper-masculine world. They are caught between two of Glasgow’s housing estates, where young working-class men divide themselves along sectarian lines, and fight territorial battles for the sake of reputation. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the doocot that James has built for his prize racing pigeons. As they begin to fall in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo must work hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold.
But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. When Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in western Scotland with two strange men behind whose drunken banter lie murky pasts, he needs to summon all his inner strength and courage 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, Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the meaning of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
REVIEWED BY RUBY CONWAY, @NBMAGAZINE
Acclaimed Scottish author Douglas Stuart has an unparalleled ability to blend grit and beauty in his linguistic prose. In his second novel, Young Mungo, Stuart returns again to the east end of Glasgow, to streets filled with violence, addiction and unhappy childhoods. While the novel at first feels very similar to Shuggie Bain - in its setting, focus on alcoholism, the shadowy echoes of Shuggie’s relationship with his mother, the intensely felt local dialect - the novel gradually diverges away from its Booker-winning predecessor as the narrative deepens. If anything, this is more of a love story, containing glimmers of hope in its weighty pages.
Young Mungo interchanges between Mungo’s life in Glasgow, as a friendship-cum-romance blooms with pigeon-keeping catholic James, and a weekend-long trip to a remote loch with two alcoholic sex offenders (as you can imagine, not light reading) sometime later, following the discovery of his sexuality by his overbearing and brutally violent older brother, Hamish. The novel is a moving literary triumph, a piercing navigation of sexuality, class, family and escape for teens growing up on the council estates of Glasgow’s east end, hoping for a better life.