Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oof this book was hard. I found the first few chapters of the book really difficult to get through - I couldn't see where the story was going, I wasn't really invested in the characters yet and I found the plot progressing really slowly. I'm glad I stuck with it though because it really picks up after the first 4 chapters. It is a heartbreaking story and I experienced so many emotions when reading this book. Anger, sadness, happiness all mixed in once. I think overall it is worth sticking with it but be aware this is not an easy read but it is a beatiful and memorable story.

Douglas Stuart’s second book may visit similar territory as Shuggie Bain at first glance, in that it centers around a young, gay boy living in working class Glasgow, raised by an alcoholic mother. However, this book is NOT another Shuggie Bain. I felt much more connected to Mungo, the main character named for a saint, and the relationship between Mungo and James is so well developed. I could feel the goodness and innocence and tenderness in their relationship as they navigated it despite the intolerance of those around them (and despite the fact that Mungo is Protestant while James is Catholic). Mungo’s mother may be neglectful and an alcoholic, but she is not at the center of the story, unlike Shuggie’s mother. Where Shuggie felt dark, Mungo has many moments of lightness and hope. I loved this book, even though Mungo’s journey was painful and uncomfortable, at times, to read about. There are definite trigger warnings for sexual abuse, and sensitive readers may want to do some research before jumping in. I highly recommend this book. It is quite a ride, but in the end I felt satisfied as a reader, and the heartbreaking journey was worth it. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an ARC for my honest review.

I loved Shuggie Bain so I was really excited to get an early copy of this book. Unfortunately i just didn’t love it like I did Shuggie.
There are many similarities to birth books; poor families in Glasgow, alcoholic mother, three kids, Gay main character. Where this veers is the love story between Mungo and James, a boy he meets in his neighborhood. The book goes back and forth between two timelines, the second where Mungo is on a “fishing trip” with a couple of truly awful men who his mom met in AA (and clearly are not quite recovered/recovering). The book is dark, filled with deep homophobia, and often hard to read (and not just because the dialect it TOUGH to understand). I think people may like this who also liked A Little Life but it doesn’t quite have the same flow as that one. I found parts slow and even not relevant to moving the story forward. Beautiful writing in parts but I’m still giving this 3ish stars. ,

I'd imagine trying to follow up a Booker Prize winning debut novel would be a daunting task, but Douglas Stuart produced another incredible, beautifully heartwrenching story in Young Mungo.

Fifteen-year-old Mungo is caught between family expectations and forbidden love in working-class Glasgow. Surrounded by violence, poverty, and rampant alcoholism, carving his own path as a young gay man promises almost certain danger and little hope. And yet, Mungo can't help it. It was impossible not to feel his pain and root for his success.

If you enjoyed Shuggie Bain, I don't think you'll be disappointed. There are many similar themes in this book, and I quickly became absorbed in these flawed but memorable characters. Definitely recommended!

Raw, real, heartbreaking and powerful - these are the words that come to mind when I think about Young Mungo.

Douglas Stuart masterfully tells the story of Mungo a teenage boy growing up in working-class 1980‘s Glasgow and who discovers queer love in an environment which is anything but accepting.

I had not read Shuggie Bain when I started Young Mungo and, thus, was both shocked and amazed by how Douglas Stuart manages to write about incredibly dark topics in a direct and raw way and still hit just the right tone.

Every single character is portrayed in their very distinct way letting the reader grasp them however short their appearance may be. The story is told in two separate storylines which seamlessly flow into each other and did not once pull me out of the story.

Young Mungo so far is my favorite read of this year and, while it is definitely not for the faint-hearted and there were scenes that made my stomach churn, ultimately, I would not hesitate to pick up a sequel to this if one was ever to be published.

DNF @ 13%

I just can't get into this. I wanted to read it because of the effusive praise Stuart's first book received, but I can't keep going right now. The writing is sometimes gorgeous but largely incomprehensible to me (maybe I need to read this during the day instead of in bed when my brain's about to turn off?), and the pacing is glacially, awfully slow. I have no idea what is happening or why there are two timelines, and I don't have the patience at the moment to read so many pages where nothing is happening.

I read Young Mungo immediately after finishing Shuggie Bain, and it wasn't the smartest decision - mostly because both books are really heavy and I left no breathing time between them, but also because they read really similar to each other because of the setting and some of the struggles.

Young Mungo is a book about young love, working-class family where siblings raise each other since the mother is absent and an alcoholic. Though there are a few moments of tenderness, this book is also about violence. It was really hard to read the book at times, specially the chapters when Mungo was "fishing" with the two strangers. It's really well written, I was engrossed in the plot, but it is a really heavy book.

This book is not light reading, but that should not stop you from reading Stuart's follow up to Shuggie Bain.

Young Mungo is simply brilliant, although it took me a little bit to realize that the story is being told in two different timelines... at the same time. What happened and what is happening...but stay with Mungo... he will show you what a true survivor is.

Thanks to Stuart, I have a clear picture of how incredibly challenging it must have been to grow up in Glasgow... at least how challenging it must have been for poor, struggling single mothers. (Please don't think I believe that Mo-maw has one redeeming quality, because she absolutely does not!) But still, I cannot imagine the struggle... Her frequent absences might have been a gift... thankfully, Mungo has a barely older sister who tries to fill the shoes of parent. He also has an older brother who, though he is not a sterling character, he inadvertently teaches Mungo the skills he will need to survive.

And despite those struggles, Mungo finds the strength to survive as well as beauty, joy and yes, love.

I highly recommend this book!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC of this book!

I didn't find this as stunningly moving as <i>Shuggie Bain</i>, but was less willing to overlook the pacing problems of Stuart's second novel than I was with his first. I found the first third to be extremely slow going, especially since this one appeared to be covering similar thematic ground and repeating similar family dynamics as <i>Shuggie Bain</i> did.

Mungo Hamilton is fatherless gay Glaswegian teenager with a codependent relationship with an alcoholic mother, growing up in a working-class housing scheme saturated with masculine brutality and homophobic violence, plunged into grinding poverty by Thatcherite deindustrialization, and divided by sectarian tensions. Stuart pursues the same narration strategy, too: extremely earthy and profane dialogue in Scottish dialect is offset by omniscient explorations of Mungo's mental and emotional states rendered at a much higher register of knowingly literary prose.

The narrative consists of two interwoven timelines, which finally join together in the novel's penultimate chapter, even if the causal relationship between them is immediately clear. First, Mungo experiences first love with James, a fatherless Catholic boy who lives only a few doors down, but in an entirely different social world. Mungo's mother, nicknamed Mo-Maw at her AA meetings, comes across as a vastly less sympathetic character than Agnes Bain: she frequently abandons him and his bookish older sister Jodie, while desperately chasing men, and is an alcoholic monster when she's present in their council flat. Mungo's older brother, Hamish, is a vicious gang leader who's trying to pull him into a life of violent crime and to conform to the prevailing code of masculinity. In the novel's final third, the narrative finally picks up speed: violence and danger escalate, until Mungo is at risk of losing everything he loves, and seeing his avenues of escape closed off one by one.

Second, a couple of months later, in order to teach Mungo to "man up," Mo-Maw sends him off on a disastrous fishing trip to a Highlands loch with two men she barely knows from AA, who turn out to be convicted sex offenders, and the sense of foreboding (foreshadowed a bit too clumsily) ratchets up halfway through into nauseating horror. Here, Mungo's actions felt discordant and out of character, and the swift plot turns were reminiscent of a certain mid-1990s Danny Boyle movie.

<i>Thanks to Grove Press and Netgalley for giving me a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.</i>

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced copy Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo thanks to Grove Media

All I can say is wow. Searing and heartbreaking. I have a feeling it'll be stuck in my mind for a while. Definitely get your hands on a copy in April!

I read and loved Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart last year, and was so excited to receive an advanced copy of the author’s second book Young Mungo from NetGalley.

This book started off really slow for me, but if I remember correctly so did Shuggie Bain. There were a LOT of similarities between the two books - poor families in Scotland, alcoholism, parental negligence - in some parts it felt too similar, especially the parts with Mungo’s mother. Maybe it’s unfair to compare the two books but it’s hard not to.

Young Mungo started to feel like its own story at about the halfway point. It is told in two timelines, one a few months before the other. In the first one Mungo and his siblings live mostly on their own, as their alcoholic mother is absent, spending time at her boyfriend’s house and caring for his children instead of her own. Mungo, teased for his facial tic and for being “soft”, befriends a boy his age and they develop romantic feelings for each other.

In the second, Mungo’s mother sends him away on a fishing trip with two HORRIBLE men from Alcoholics Anonymous (who are CLEARLY NOT in recovery) in the hopes of helping him “man up.” Things took a dark, strange turn on the trip, and not in a good way.

I’m disappointed that I did not love this very much. Stuart is a talented writer, no doubt, but I was underwhelmed. From the descriptions I’d read about it I expected a forbidden love not only between two boys but between a Catholic and a Protestant. That is such a small part of the book. It’s more about miserable adults doing awful things to children mixed in with gang violence. I expected a sad, yet tender story like Shuggie but that’s not what this is at all.

I don’t want to give any spoilers but there are a lot of trigger warnings, including pedophilia and rape, which made it really difficult for me to read.

TW: Physical violence, abortion, sexual abuse

Young Mungo is a story that narrates the life of the protagonist with his difficulties and problems, the awakening of his sexuality and how the latter will bring consequences that will put at risk both his life and that of his first love.

This story is divided into two timelines, we have the first, which is the first that appears chronologically in the book, where Mungo is sent on a fishing trip with two complete strangers, his mother's decision. At first they seemed nice, but I was still suspicious, since such an unplanned trip with two adults of whom nothing is known can obviously not be a good thing.
The second timeline deals with Mungo's life before meeting James, where we see how Mungo's mother, who is an alcoholic, and almost never at home, can go weeks without visiting her children, so Mungo's sister, Jodie, is the one who has to take care of her family; we also have Ha-ha, the older brother of this family, who is a gangster, has his gang and he is the one who constantly bothers Mungo about "becoming a man".

From the beginning of the story we can see how Mungo is a very good, helpful person who cares a lot about his family, to the point where he forgives all the things his mother did. Due to the almost null presence of parental figures in their lives I could realize how everyone in this family has problems because of that, Jodie always felt insufficient, and when someone arrived who gave her some attention and hope we could see the change in this one and how that slip brought some problems to the story.
In Mungo several times we could see how the love for his mother made him question his own happiness, deprive himself of things and how he always tried to put others above him.

Giving my opinion about the book, I have to say that the way the author represented the time in his book was quite incredible, the details of the Scotland of those times did allow me to imagine the scenarios, which was wonderful; in the same way I think he portrayed very well the violence and discrimination that queer people suffered at that time, from the insults to the aggressions that several times made me angry for the injustice committed.
Something I should also add, and this may vary depending on each reader, is that the author introduced a lot of Scottish slangs in the book, more specifically in most of the conversations between the characters, this in my case I did not end up liking it because I had to reread several times some of these to try to understand what they were trying to say.

At a certain point Mungo will meet James and we will see how a friendship starts to develop and as time goes by it will become something more. I will say that I liked James' backstory a lot, then his relationship with Mungo was tender and a bit strange, but in a good way.

Now back to the story, we have several critical points within this one; I had read another review from another person about this book that said that he didn't know if the TW should be included or not, because knowing them could take away a little the effect that the scene can have, but at the same time I feel that they are necessary for those people who are sensitive to these issues, because although these scenes are not so strong they can hurt the sensitivity of some people.

To conclude with this I could say that I enjoyed the book, but not as much as I would have expected, but I still feel that the book should be given a chance and it can captivate you.

Final Rating: 3.5 stars

The marketing for this book: “A story of queer love and working-class families” and “a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.”

The actual book: The gratuitous and increasingly god-awful torture of a fifteen year old queer kid, including on-page rape. It’s like a queer litfit take on Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue.

After finishing this book, I have…a really gross feeling in my stomach. I am disturbed. I am sorry I believed that the marketing copy implied this is primarily a story of love flourishing despite environment. I am not really the right person for this book. Had the book description been more accurate, I wouldn’t have read it.

Mungo Hamilton is a quiet kid with an eye twitch who likes to draw. He mostly just wants people to love him or leave him alone. It’s easy to feel sympathetic toward him. He’s got family: an alcoholic mother, a gang-leader brother, a hopeful sister who takes care of him but is determined to make a better life for herself.

The book jumps between two timelines. In the first, we meet Mungo’s family, Mungo and James fall in love, and we look at the families and individuals who live around Mungo. The second is a camping trip from hell.

Timeline number one details all the ways in which Mungo’s family is broken, and all of the slightly different ways in which the families around him are broken. We meet the nice woman downstairs whose husband beats her when his football team loses. And another neighbor who is afraid to take his dog out in the daylight because he’s afraid of the street kids who hate him for being queer. And James, whose dad will kick him out unless he gets a girlfriend to prove he isn’t queer. Everyone is poor and miserable, everyone who tries to do better gets stomped on, and there’s always someone being awful to the people who try to be kind. The love story takes up a small portion of the book.

The book marketing calls this, “a vivid portrayal of working-class life.” Except how can it be? Every single person is miserable. Every single sympathetic person is abused or neglected by someone else. Is it fair to say that abuse and misery accurately portray the lives of all working-class people? Or even all working-class people in this place and time? The focus on misery here is relentless. I understand there is probably a good reason for this, but it’s difficult to believe that’s the only way it can be.

Next paragraph includes a discussion about rape. Skip if you like.

In the second timeline, Mungo’s alcoholic, gives-no-shits-about-her-children mother sends Mungo, her fifteen year old son who’s never even been to the other side of the city, away on a fishing trip to the middle of nowhere with two men she doesn’t know. To make a man of him. On night two, they hold his mouth open and pour alcohol down his throat until he’s drunk. Then they take turns raping him. They beat him when he struggles. The day after, they both tell him there’s something wrong with him for not enjoying the rape. The fishing trip isn’t over, and Mungo knows it’s going to happen again. He endures another night with one of the men before he eventually gets out of the situation and makes it home.

Can we revisit the marketing for this book again? “A story of queer love and working-class families.” Is that what this is?

Queer love is just a sliver of the book’s content. The working-class families are all hopelessly broken. And, maybe I’m a minority here, but when a book description promises a story of love, I don’t think “ah, yes, probably includes graphic and prolonged rape.”

I don’t know what this book is suppose to be, but it’s only what’s promised in the marketing copy if you whittle away—or creatively reinterpret—something like 90% of the book. It at least ends on a note of hope. But out of 400 pages, it’s a single, ambiguous line.

This is probably a fine, maybe even great, book for a lot of people. I largely enjoy the way Douglas Stuart writes, but this particular story is not for me.

This novel manages to be beautiful, heart-breaking, and dark all at once, yet it somehow manages to end on what seems to be a slightly hopeful note. Young Mungo is an examination of toxic masculinity, especially among the working-class, and the dangers that gay people face just for being themselves. Set in Glasgow during the early 1990s, there is not a single character, no matter how minor, who isn't fully realized. You can definitely imagine meeting everyone in this book, and, in fact, I spent most of the book wishing I could reach inside and pull Mungo into a better situation (it didn't help that my oldest is about the same age as Mungo). Mungo's family is a mess, and his relationship with James is his one bright spot in an otherwise dreary life.

"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."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A gorgeously written tragic family drama with beautifully wrought characters. For lovers of his first book Shuggie Bain you will not be disappointed but there is a little bit of a sense of deja vu. I think young mungo is more intimate than shuggie bain was and I found myself caring so tremendously for mungo.

There are characters in books who touch your heart and that you know will leave a mark there for all time. Mungo is one of these rare characters.
He is a boy trying to find his way in a world that is hard and unforgiving. He loves his Mum, but knows she loves the bottle and her need to improve her own life more than she loves her children. You can't help feeling compassion for her though and imagining the hard life she has had. The same goes for Mungo's siblings, especially Jodie who is the focus of parts of the book. She is an amazing character and I would love to know what she does next. (Please..?.)
Young Mungo is heart breaking, but beautiful, passionate and richly portrayed. Douglas Stuart can WRITE. He takes you to a place you would rather not be, but where you want to know all and not miss a thing. I am in awe of his talent and the pain he shares.
I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to read this book early and thank the author, Grove Atlantic who publish the book in the USA, and @NetGalley for allowing me this privilege.
I read the US version of the book. Picador are publishing the book in the UK, and I intend to buy it and read it again in April to see if there are any differences.
I wish I could give #YoungMungo 6 stars - it deserves every one of them.

A truly wonderful follow up to Shuggie Bain. There are a lot of similarities between the two books, low income tenement families, alcohol, drugs and forbidden love, but it’s so well written, bleak and heartbreaking yet romantic and tender and you just never know how things will turn out for Mungo.
Set in Glasgow in the 1990s, at just 15, Mungo, named after St Mungo, is living at home with his alcoholic mother and 16 year old sister. Jodie. Jodie runs the household, looks after Mungo and sees that his home life runs as smoothly as possible. Their older brother Hamish, a Proddy warlord, lives with the 15y old mother of his child and her parents. Mungo has always been the soft one, kind hearted and caring. When he begins a friendship with James, a 15 year old catholic boy, it soon turns to love, and the boys long to live where they can be free to be together.
Hamish is determined to toughen his brother up, and makes him participate in a gang battle, and tries to encourage him towards the drugs trade.
Woven through the narrative is another story. Ma Maw his mother has packed him off on a fishing trip with 2 men she had just met at AA. It’s meant to be a “manly” trip to teach Mungo how to fish and make a camp site, but the men have other ideas of what they want from Mungo. Slowly the two stories merge and Mungo’s life seems doomed to a life of violence and crime.
It’s a terrifying life for a young boy but there is always hope. I absolutely loved this novel

#YoungMungo #NetGalley

This is an excellent book. Mungo is a high school student, growing up in Glasgow. His mother had him and his older brother and sister when she was young and has raised them on her own for most of her life, struggling with addiction throughout most of that period. His brother is now leads a local gang and has a baby of his own. His sister, the most academically inclined of the three, faces her own struggles even as she hopes to escape their town for university. Mungo knows he must hide his true identity from his family and those in their town if he is to remain safe. That becomes harder, though, as he spends more and more time with James, another boy from his neighborhood. Despite all the obstacles, the two fall in love and begin to dream of a future together away from their town. But the realities of their family lives, economic circumstances, and societal expectations close in, causing them both to wonder whether such a future is truly possible.

This is an impactful read. It is both an individual story about Mungo and those in his life, and a larger story about the societal forces that shape people's lives. It is beautifully written, creating a strong sense of place and compelling characters. This is not a book you will soon forget.

Highly recommended.

I’d expected a sad book, which it certainly was, but it was even harder than I thought it would be. The themes explored aren’t for the faint of heart but it is well worth the read. The writing is absolutely stunning and it truly invites you into the story and makes you feel part of it. It’s easy enough to get through which helps with the often difficult thematics of the book.

The main reason I didn’t give it five stars is that the beginning of the book wasn’t very engaging and it took a bit of puzzling and some time to really get into. You get introduced to the two timelines immediately, which piqued my curiosity, but there’s also a bit too much focus on the many side characters such as Mungo’s family and the two men he goes camping with. Personally, it wasn’t the best start to invite me in as a reader. That being said, once you get to the end, or at least the second half, it will have made it entirely worth it as you now have a better idea of the people Mungo surrounds himself with and how he creates his own identity compared to others.

At the start of the story, I also felt that a couple of things were very predictable but there are plot twists that come later on that made me not mind at all. Especially when an already dark story takes an even darker turn.

For me, the story really began once James appeared and it temporarily took a softer turn. His and Mungo’s exploration of their young queer love was, to me, the center of the story, and everything else circled around it. It is beautiful and painful and everything this story needed to be.

Quite a read, with so many themes. 1-Poverty and unemployment in Glasgow, with a nod to the Thatcher economic policies, and the subsequent unemployment, alcoholism , and domestic violence.
2- a family unit, with absentee father, an alcoholic mother(35) with three teenage children,a daughter(essentially the mother figure in the house) a hardened criminal brother and leader of the protestant gang, and Mungo, a sensitive ridiculed boy with probable Tourette’s and a devotion to his mother, an alcoholic and dismissive mother who frequently abandons her children for strange men , because she’s young and “ deserves fun.”
3- Protestant versus Catholic violent gang fights( a timely WEST SIDE STORY) vividly portrayed and in which brother Hamish forces Mungo to participate to essentially “ toughen him up”.
4- the gay love between 2 lonely boys- the Protestant Mungo and the Catholic James( I immediately thought of Romeo and Juliet).
5- the utterly horrifying scenes that result when Ma-Maw entrusts Mungo to two fellow AA members she barely knows, both of whom have served prison time for child molestation with the resultant horrible consequences you might predict and even worse subsequent events.
Long, but well written, at times funny, at times horrifying, but in the end another great read from Douglas Stuart-imo, better than Shuggie Bain.