This book tore my heart apart like A Little Life and I'm glad that NetGalley introduced me to another author, Douglas Stuart, who writes with such mastery and effortlessness. I'm heartbroken about what happened to Mungo but at least I got the chance to see the characters come alive. My only regret is that I didn't read this book much sooner.

This is such a heartbreaking story of a young boy who is somehow able to see the good in everyone, while being tortured and tormented by those he tries to care about. It's a devastating dynamic for him to be in, but Douglas Stuart weaves his story so brilliantly that I couldn't put it down. Mungo is a character who will remain with me long after I turned the last page.

This was a very emotional read. Stuart did a great job in establishing Mungo's character and then developing a world that was at odds with his nature in ways that were both insightful and harrowing to witness. Perhaps the best example of this is in how each of the Hamilton siblings deals with the cruelty of the world. I think the romance with James was well done but I felt the conflicts with religion could have been introduced and developed earlier. Overall a very satisfying read.

What a heartbreaker. It's the coming of age story of 15 year old Glaswegian, Mungo. His mother is an alcoholic, his older brother is the leader of a gang and his sister is desperately trying to protect him and care for him. He’s been dealt a tough hand and it doesn't get easier when he falls in love with James, a Catholic. They should be sworn enemies and they risk the wrath of both their families. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

The dialogue is all written in a strong Glaswegian dialect, which I loved! It made the whole story immersive and vivid - but might be tricky for anyone not in tune with Scottish dialect. It's heartbreaking and memorable and will stay with you long after you finish the final page. I wanted more closure for Mungo and James, I guess after the horrifying things Mungo experiences I really wanted him to get his happily ever after. Overall, highly recommended.

"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"

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The tender love of a fifteen year old and how the society pressures him to be a different person.

Mungo lives in a housing scheme with his alcoholic single mom and older sister Jodie. His father was killed on the ongoing violent street war between protestant and catholic gangs. His mother is unable to cope on her own with three children turns to alcohol, leaving the kids alone from time to time at with no food, while she spends any money she has on some random guy. When the kind hearted Mungo falls in love with a motherless catholic boy, his perspective changes. Being forced to take a fish trip with strangers by his mother, makes his life worse.

Interweaving timelines, Glasgow dialect and bleak setting hooks you to the story. Young gay, artistic Mungo is faced with society's views of masculinity, fear of overbearing men, Traditionalism. Jodie works for college and respect. She guides Mungo and supports him as a mother. Hamish, the oldest brother wants Mungo to "Man up", Fight with his gang on streets. I felt like Mungo suffered more than necessary in the book!!

But don't give up yet!! The tender love between two boys,  Mungo and James finally gave a little hope!! Two boys from a broken family, abandoned and to be comforted only by each other.

“Ach, I lose birds all the time. That’s the game. When you let them go out on their own, they go as far as they want to go, you take a chance. If they want to come back, then they come back. If they don’t, then you lose them.”

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 and it was good but not what I was anticipating. I felt like there was a lot of similar ideas as Shuggie Bain but not enough to make it stand out and feel fresh. I definitely didn't feel as connected to Mungo as I did with Shuggie. It also felt so traumatic. It was just tense - waiting for the bad to happen and then the bad actually happening along with a side of worse than you can imagine on top of it. I wanted to hit the brakes so many times and yet it just kept coming until the end. Jodie, the sister, was a bright spot in this book as well as sweet neighbor James. I did like the way the Protestant vs Catholic issues of that time in Glasgow were explored as just part of daily life, which I assume is very close to what the culture was like. I really wanted to like this more than I did but I will still try Stuart's next book.

YOUNG MUNGO— Douglas Stuart

I loved Shuggie Bain. It was a top read for me the year it came out. When I heard that Stuart was releasing a new novel I couldn’t wait to pick it up.

Young Mungo didn’t disappoint. If you were a fan of Shuggie, you will like this. In fact, the novels hold many, many similarities. At first, it bothered me a bit that the two read so closely.. but then I couldn’t help but fall deeply into Mungo’s story. Mungo and his sister are such lovable characters and you can’t help but to want so much better for them.. and for everyone in Mungo’s circle.

This book is sad. It’s gritty and it’s complicated. Whenever I read Stuart’s work I can’t help but to think about the separate worlds in which those with privilege exist. I lived in Glasgow while working on my Master’s and my experience and my experience of the city was so vastly different than this Glasgow. And, the personal and societal reflection this exploration elicits is so deeply important.

Without hesitation I can say I will read anything Douglas Stuart writes.

I received a reviewer copy of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart from the publisher Grove Press from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

CW: Sexual assault of a minor, Sexual assault by a person in authority, violence, domestic violence, toxic parent, homophobia, molestation, murder, and more.

What It’s About: We follow Mungo Hamilton who has grown up in a housing section in Glasgow as he deals with his teen years. He is the son of an absentee mother, the charge of a sister only a year older than him, and the brother of a Protestant gang. When he meets James, a Catholic son of a rig worker, it finally gives Mungo some hope on a future, but the two's love faces all kind of challenges. This book is set on two time lines, one building up his relationship with James and the other taking place after some earth shattering incident and the fallout on a camping trip.

What I Loved: It's no secret that Shuggie Bain was one of my favorite books of 2021 and that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Young Mungo doesn't disappoint. Stuart's writing is gorgeous and transports you to the middle of Glasgow. I can visual this whole book and at times that was hell but it made me care about all these character. The way Stuart writes gentle souls who go through hell and are forced into less than gentle situations is amazing. It is brutal and not easy. This book explores sibling relationships, bigotry, relationships with parents, and hiding who you are. This book is a character story I won't forget.

What I didn’t like so much: This book can be slow and the language takes some time to adjust to, but that's fine. At times it was hard to separate Mungo from Shuggie (the lead of Stuart's first book), and I would often find myself reading it as the second of Shuggie Bain rather than a unique story. This ultimately becomes less of an issue as you get deeper into Mungo's world but it is worth saying.

Who Should Read It: People who love character driven novels. People who like books that tare them apart. People who loved Shuggie Bain.

Summary: A powerful and heartbreaking story of a young queer boy coming to age.

Currently reading...⁣
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I'm about of a quarter of the way into Young Mungo and I feels so similar to Shuggie Bain, in a good way. It hasn't quite grabbed me the same way Shuggie did but I am interested to see where this one heads.⁣
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This one has unique sibling relationships and I usually love books that focus on these complex relationships.⁣
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Do you have a favorite book that focuses on siblings?

After posting*
I decided not to post a review about this one because I didn't love it, I actually really disliked it. The reason I didn't share this is because I loved Shuggie so I had a feeling this may have been more of a 'me' problem. It just felt like the exact same story as Shuggie with less direction. Douglas is a beautiful writer but I worry he is a one trick pony writing about drunken mothers that treat their kids horribly.

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart.

First off, BIG trigger warning. Big enough that I would hesitate to recommend this at all. Sexual assualt, abuse, hate crimes towards LGBTQ+ people, abandonment, gaslighting, etc. This is a doozy!

Mungo is a sweet young teen living in Scotland, constantly drifting in a sea of uncertainty. His mother has all but abandoned him and his siblings. His sister Jodie is kind, but distracted with her own big issues, and his brother Hamish is devoted to Mungo, but often teaches with an iron fist.

Mungo's life reaches a major crossroads one day when two men from his mother's AA group come to collect him for a week of fishing and camping. Mungo is hesitant, but excited to see a whole new part of Scotland. The two men initially seem fine enough, but it doesn't take much time before Mungo realizes how unsafe he is. Not only that, but will he even return home safely?

Ooof, like I said, this is tough. Was it good? Yes, it's very good, it's well written, full of Scottish culture and the harsh underbelly of the gang scene in Scotland. The characters and plot are incredibly well developed and the atmosphere was beautifully brought to life. I did enjoy this story and the full immersive experience of it, but listen, just approach with lots of caution okay?

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-words-glossary/words-t.htm

Let me start off by saying that I do not believe the harshness of my personal rating is reflective of the quality of the book. This is a rare instance where I think <em>Young Mungo </em>is probably a great story, it just was not the story for me at the time I decided to read it. Douglas Stuart's novel is about a boy named Mungo who grew up in Glasgow and pursues an ill fated relationship with a boy named James, and is subjected to many misadventures along the way. His family is made up of his alcoholic mother, his abusive brother, and the sister who is attempting to manage them all

When I read the description of this book, I thought it was going to be more or less a love story. Instead, it was more of a look into the lives of poor Glasgowians as a whole, in my opinion. The story was also DARK. I knew the romance may not have gone well, but there are trigger warnings abound for this novel. There is rarely a happy moment in the entire thing. I had read 40% of the way through before even getting to a scene which I enjoyed reading.

All of the dialog is also written using local dialect. The spelling is done so that you're forced to read it the way people are talking. This made the book (which was already too slow for me) impossible to skim read. I think if it hadn't been such a difficult read in terms of dialog, this may have been rated higher because I would have been able to breeze through the parts I didn't like for the ones I genuinely did.

That being said, I think the plot of this novel was well crafted, and that Douglas Stuart is a good writer. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a dark story of trials and tribulations that follows a budding gay narrator. If you're looking for a romance, I would say to skip this one.

What a book, the ability to tackle such topics bravely and sensitively was amazing. The book had me drawn in from the very start and I just couldn’t put the book down I was committed to Mungo and wanted to protect him on the journey

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC. While I didn't enjoy this one as much as Shuggie Bain, I appreciate the attention to the perspective if the working class and the environment - I felt transported to Ireland, which was interesting.

Similar to Shuggie Bain, Young Mungo is set in Glasgow with a way of speaking that is foreign to me. It takes a few chapters to understand what these characters are saying, but once the reader gets used to it, the story flows. The story is told from dual timelines and begins with Mungo's fishing trip. The reader is not clear who he is with, but it is apparent he does not know the men and they both have questionable pasts. Chapters alternate to Mungo's past with James, his gang leader brother, his sister who essentially is his mother and his absent alcoholic mother. In some ways, the story reminded me of Shuggie Bain, especially with the alcoholic mother and overcompensating son theme.

Mungo spends his life hiding who he is and doing what others expect of him, so he does not stand out. Until he meets James, he really has no drive in life and goes from one situation to the next. He is told who he should be, what he should do, and what makes a man a man, yet no one truly knows what makes him tick, that is until he meets James. Their friendship is a spot of sunshine on a cloudy day.

Young Mungo is one of those books where you will want to take your time and savor every word. I will admit, at times I was bored and at other times I felt like I was re-reading Shuggie Bain, but push through because it is worth it in the end. One of the best reviews I read likened Mungo to an alternate reality of Shuggie. It is in ways, but in others Mungo stands on his own. The second half of the book has a build up of tension that kept me turning the pages and the ending had me broken. I love a book that emotionally destroys me and Young Mungo did in the end.

I sit here with my head in my hands and grief in the pit of my stomach thinking about the events in this heartbreaking and devastating story.

Mungo is a young boy of 14-15 years of age in Glasgow, Scotland coming to grips with his own sexuality in a time and place where such things are forbidden. This story rattled me to my core. I have heard readers describe it as a Romeo and Juliet retelling and that comparison clicked for me. Mungo and James were loveable little flowers growing together in an unlikely situation but later being crushed by a violent foot. There is such a striking contrast of tender, young love and the violent, hyper-masculine and repressed world they live in.

What I struggled with, to be honest, is the amount of graphic depictions of physical and sexual abuse and trauma. Shuggie Bain was a favorite of mine last year and was also incredibly bleak but this one took it to another level. I would have loved a little hope or humor to balance out all the brutality but Young Mungo is a sad, SAD story of survival in a cruel world.

I found this to be incredibly wonderful and powerful but also extremely challenging to digest.

Thank you to NetGallery and Grove Atlantic for the advance copy of this book. I was eager to read this as I loved Douglas Stuart's 'Shuggie Bain'.

A similar set up to 'Shuggie Bain' in its similar themes of post-Thatcher poverty in 1990s Glasgow, masculinity and family, but this story deserves its own merit. However, I believe this is a stronger and more nuanced novel than Stuart's debut novel. This story was a breathtaking love story and will stay with me for a long time. An incredibly well written story where every character had depth, even minor characters have authenticity. Although heartbreaking and disturbing at times, the book left me feeling hopeful.

I'm kind of at a loss for words to be honest, I found this story to be utterly heartwrenching. I saw a review comparing it to A Little Life and I kind of understand that. Not just in its depiction of trauma and violence (many a trigger warning is needed here as well so proceed with caution) but also in the way that the story somewhat creeps up on you and manages to slowly and subtly get under your skin. It's not that there's an incredible plot that sucks you in from the very beginning but rather you follow the story almost in a daze, not really into it for the first 100 pages or so until you suddenly find yourself in the deep end (much like the cover art, come to think of it).

Young Mungo takes place in Glasgow and tells the story of, well, young Mungo, a 15-year-old who has an alcoholic barely-there mother, a sister with her own set of problems, a violent brother who basically leads the gang, and the catholic boy next door who keeps pigeons and befriends Mungo. The story takes place in two different times: The January Before and The May After and the whole thing really does well in deeply unsettling you every time you flip back and forth between the two timelines.

The way Mungo's life is depicted within the context of Glasgow in the nineties really worked effectively in making me not just fully empathize with Mungo and his gloomy problems but to also have a better understanding of all the social and political things that led to him and many others like him being forced to live such lives. It's not really a "commentary" book or one that delves deep into the issues but it's one that manages to subtly (kind of the key word in this review) say a lot without saying too much.

Overall, I think I really felt this book, I can't say I "enjoyed it" but I'm going to be thinking about the ending (or the last 100 pages or so) for a very long time.

As a huge fan of Shuggie Bain, I eagerly anticipated Stuart’s next novel. Young Mungo was written with the same beauty and misery and suffering as Shuggie Bain, and though there were many differences, to me they just felt too similar.

The story is marketed as a love story between Mungo and James, but James does not appear in the novel until well into the story. For me, the pacing was too slow. Additionally, the Glaswegian dialect was really challenging to read. I had to stop and look up words, further interrupting the rhythm of my reading. Finally, Mungo’s arc was heartbreaking and dark (I don’t want to give any spoilers). Once I put the book down for the night, the story did not call to me the next morning.

Stuart is a masterful writer, and I would be interested in reading more of his books, but only if they are a departure from his last two grim novels.

My thanks to NetGalley for an Advanced Readers Copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in any way.

I would highly recommend it. This novel is truly a masterpiece. I haven't read Shuggie Bain but I've read a lot of reviews about it and all of them seem to agree that is a fantastic, heartbreaking novel. Young Mungo doesn't spare the reader a great dose of heartbreak. It is a coming-of-age and love story with a very interesting social and historical backdrop: the city of Glasgow and the raving conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in the 90s. We follow young Mungo's sexual and emotional awakening when he falls in love with a Catholic boy and how this affects Mungo's perception of the surrounding world, redefining his family and social bonds. We are talking about a time when gay men were perceived as morally weak and dangerous. Mungo and Jamie are two young men from different religions ( or, quoting Derry Girls, "different flavors of the same religion") that find themselves and their love for each other, trapped in other people's quarrels. As a reader, I was rooting for them to find happiness, all the time. It's a very heartfelt novel without being overdramatic thanks to Stuart's genuine writing style.