A very powerful book that was read beautifully. I would suggest that you don't speed up the audiobook due to the accent of the reader. Also in my opinion think about following along with the physical copy.

The blurb for this book makes it sound like a gay Romeo and Juliet. It’s not that. James doesn’t appear until mid-book and, although their love story is sweet, this book is Mungo’s story. This is the author’s second book and in each there is an incredibly innocent, kind, resilient and preternaturally forgiving boy. It’s impossible not to love Mungo. Even his drunken, useless and mostly-absent mother loves him. Mungo’s brother and sister look on their mother with disdain and recognize that she will never be there for them. Mungo still believes in her. He also still has hope in the world, despite the meanness and cruelty he encounters. He constantly faces demands that he “man up”, culminating in a disastrous fishing excursion with two men his mother picks up at an AA meeting. This is really a pretty desolate story. I get it. The author had a truly rough childhood but I hope that his next book is not about an abused child because I think that I have had about as much of that as I can take. There are too many trigger warnings to list. If you can imagine it, it’s in this book. The author does write beautifully though, and he creates very believable characters.

I received a free copy of the audio book from the publisher. Unfortunately, I did not also have an ebook and I really needed one. The narrator’s Scottish accent was impenetrable. I slowed down the audio and after listen to about a third of the book I was finally used to him. However, between the words I couldn’t decipher and the terms with which I was unfamiliar I kind of dreaded getting back to this book. A different narrator would have made this a less difficult experience.

Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain was a much lauded, smash hit, and critical success. I haven't read it yet but when I heard that Stuart had a new book coming out, I was super excited to check it out. I had read that some parts of Shuggie Bain were hard to read so the chance to hear it on audio was also a nice turn of good luck, to make better sense of what was being said on the page.

Young Mungo is the story of Mungo, a fifteen year old boy in Glasgow's housing estates, coming to terms with his identity in a world that is not kind to tender, young men. This book is garnering a lot of comparisons to Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, which is a whooper of a book, that reads like being hit over the head with the deepest sorrow. What is magical about Stuart's writing is that in so few pages, he manages to convey the raw reality of Mungo's place in his world, and the pain he feels. It is powerfully beautiful writing but it is not for the faint of heart.

There is a lot to unpack in Young Mungo, and I don't think I'm the right person to do that, sager folk than I can do a much better job of extracting the essence from this wonderful novel. For me, it rang with poignancy and it glowed with the lovely feeling of being in love for the first time. This is tempered by the absolutely awful things that happen to Mungo and James.

This isn't for the fainthearted. There is violence, such a lot of it. There is a lot of alcohol abuse, with echoes of Shuggie Bain there. There's the wonderful character of Mungo's sister who I adored. And Hamish, the big brother from hell, while he is wincingly difficult to read about, he is so well drawn that you get his menace from the first chapter. Mungo's mother is close to a copy of Shuggie's mother in many ways, and I was disturbed by that. Douglas, I'm going to need you to write about a mother who isn't addled by alcohol in your next book, please!

Don't start this unless you have something cheerful waiting in the wings for afters. Read it knowing that it is perfectly paced, incredibly moving and deeply disturbing. This is a writer at the top of his game and I'm full of admiration at his skill at describing tastes, smells and feelings.

I adored it wholeheartedly. I listened to the audiobook and found the reader to be pitch perfect. I highly recommend this to everyone who likes their books sad and beautiful with a hefty dose of grit!
Thanks to NetGalley for the access to this novel. It was certainly one to remember. I see awards in its future.

Young Mungo is an emotionally affecting coming of age novel Mungo, a gay teen growing up in an impoverished part of Glasgow where sectarian violence is rife. To be anything other than a hard man was unacceptable; to be gay and found with a boy of the “wrong” religion was something else entirely. The way Mungo’s mother responded to this and the consequences for him were heartbreaking.

This was a tough read - homophobia, violence, and sexual assaults plus the harsh reality of alcoholism and poverty. Yet there are also moments of love and tenderness - Mungo’s feelings for James, Jodie’s efforts, imperfect though they were, to take care of Mungo.

Similarities with Shuggie Bain are perhaps inevitable. Both are set in Glasgow tenements, both feature a gay son and an alcoholic mother. Yet these are not the same novel. Mungo is older than Shuggie, his story invokes a larger cast of core characters and the focus of each novel is very different. The tone of Mungo is decidedly darker. I personally found it a lot harder to feel any kindness or sympathy towards Mungo’s mother than I did towards Agnes.

Through unadorned prose Stuart manages to create a sweet and tender love story which stands in contrast to its harsh and unforgiving setting. The characterisation and sense of place were top notch and I loved that the ending was hopeful yet realistic.

Thanks to @netgalley for providing me with an ALC.

well narrated (with Scottish accent is a chef's kiss). In the sense that this narrative is about misery, violence, and the hazards of love, it reminded me of A LITTLE LIFE, SWIMMING IN THE DARK, CLEANNESS and many more. The intricate story of a young gay guy dealing with traditionalism, tolerance, open-mindedness, responsiveness, observance, freethinking, noncompliance, and 'young love' is tragic, breathtaking, and highly memorable.....

Douglas Stuart does an amazing job crafting the story of Young Mungo. Skipping back and forth through time, covering the tales of Mungo, his siblings, mother, and friend James. Just enough of each bit of the story is revealed, till the climactic ending. Just perfectly done!

Chris Reilly delivers a stellar performance in the audio version of Young Mungo. His thick, rolling Glaswegian accent creates a wonderful atmosphere. From the intimate times the boys spend together, the terror of the street fights, and Mungo's fateful camping trip, Mr. Reilly truly brings this story to life.

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.

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?

Trigger warnings: graphic violence, rape, pedophilia

My first impression of this novel was the hauntingly beautiful cover and a sample of the audiobook, narrated by Chris Reilly, that promised a queer love story. Instead what I received was beautiful lyrical prose for the first 40-or-so percent of the book before I was hit with a graphic rape scene of a 15 year old boy by two adult men.

I rarely listen to audiobooks but the narrators voice in this one was so perfect that I had to request it, Chris Reilly was not monotonous and his inflection and pacing was perfect. I deeply enjoyed listening to his voice, minus the scenes depicting sexual assault, and think he did an incredible job.

The story itself was very good but is not something I would have picked up had I been aware of its more explicit, triggering, content. Stuart has introduced characters you can't help but feel for, like Mungo and James, while also creating villains so nauseatingly repulsive that reading about them makes you see red, like Maureen and Hamish.

While the story explore queer love, it is not the main aspect of this book. 'Young Mungo' really explores the complications of family and feelings of loneliness while facing the horrors of the real world.

It is easy to give Young Mungo 5 stars! Douglas Stuart has once again brought us a masterful portrait of a boy on his own against the tides of poverty, classism, neglect, alcoholism, and heteronormativity in working class Glasgow in the late 1900s. Although it is tempting to see Stuart's second novel a rehash of the same intellectual and emotional territory as his debut Shuggie Bain, this second novel is distinct in many ways: the main character is older, he is awakening to his budding sexuality, the story takes place about a decade later, and this novel is very distinctly structured and paced.

In a stroke of genius, Stuart overlays two stories over another in Young Mungo: The first that follows Mungo as he is taken on a "man's" fishing trip near a loch by two friends of his mother's. The other story looks back at Mungo's life several months previously in the east Glasgow tenements, as he falls in love with a fellow young man and navigates his tumultuous family and the rigid heteronormativity and masculinity of his community. Stuart switches between each time period throughout the book, in a brilliant move that creates a rising tension as we reach the close of the book and the story lines intersect.

If you like to be absolutely devastated at the end of a novel, this book is for you. Stuart's writing is beautiful, and the story of Mungo's life is heartbreaking and tenderly rendered. Each character, including minimal side characters, are so uniquely represented so that we get a portrait of not only a young man in turmoil, but a whole community on the edge.

I read this via audiobook and Chris Reilly's narration is so wonderful--I honestly cannot imagine reading this book without his deep Scottish voice as the guide.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for the audio ARC.

I received an audiobook copy of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Overall, I enjoyed some parts of the book, but I felt that most of it dragged on quite a bit. This made it very difficult to get into the book and get to know the characters in any meaningful way. Additionally at times, it seemed like Mungo did things that seem uncharacteristic of him or contradicted what his character was made out to be like.
I also found that most of the feminine characters were treated and acted the same way besides a handful of them. I understand that their actions represent the truth of what can occur in some instances, but the way these issues are discussed and treated in the book comes across negatively. Finally, I feel like this book should include some form of a trigger warning list as there are numerous things I would have loved a warning about regardless of the effects knowing about it would have on the story. Therefore, I highly recommend looking up a trigger warning list before reading this book.

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.

I listened to this as an audiobook and Chris Reilly does a terrific job of narrating the story.

It is 1993 and the chapters are divided between “The May After” and “The January Before”. The novel is quite painterly on different levels and builds up the layers in slow, lingering prose. The author gradually establishes the family set up and living conditions, in which Mungo (named after St Mungo, who has a major shrine in the cathedral in Glasgow) lives and spares the reader nothing. it is truly a wretched situation for this teenager. His 35 year old mother – Mo-Maw – is an alcoholic and craves affection from the men who wander through her life. She breezes in and out depending on her whims. Her eldest, Hamish, was conceived when she was 15, the same age that Mungo is in the story. Hamish is a vicious and violent trouble maker, who terrorises everyone around him; he lives away, together with the mother of his infant and breezes back into the family, when the mood takes him – he usually wants something. Jodie, the middle child, cares as best she can for her younger brother and both youngsters are trying to cope with the role reversal of caring for their mother. – well, keeping their mother out of danger. There is hardly ever food on the table and the relentless misery of their circumstances is unremitting. It all feels very real, raw and visceral. No child should have to endure these living conditions.

The cover (in the UK) gives much of the story away and young Mungo, who has never felt comfortable around the womanising and toxic masculinity exemplified by his brother, falls for James and they spend hours together in his pigeon loft (doocot in Scottish), exploring their early sexuality and finding relief from the hardship of life beyond.

In the sections “The May After”, Mungo has been bundled off with two men, whom their mother met at AA, for a testosterone fuelled weekend by Loch Lomond. The men are rancid in their behaviour and bearing, and the author spares no detail in describing their putrid and rank souls. Their mission is to make a man of him and thus they all set off with two tents, changing buses until they reach their destination – a remote loch, where they establish their camp and get out the tins of lager and food.

Violence begets violence, and the author’s unflinching portrayal of deprivation and depravity is searing. It is a compellingly told story of miserable existences that have little chance of leveraging themselves to a better, kinder life. He skilfully fills in the details between the two time periods, building up a darkly depressing storyline as Mungo battles his way forwards.

Goodness, this is a novel of grinding poverty and hardship that in a way needs to be told. It is a social indictment, it is a chilling story of humanity and brutality. As a reader you will need to be in the right mood to read it and when the time is right, it is worth it.

What a spectacularly written book, and my god, the emotions!! This has very easily slotted into my top three reads ever along with A Little Life and A Thousand Splendid Suns (can you tell what kind of reader I am?!)!

Firstly, I adored Mungo, Jodie and James and their characters are so well written. I loved the story line, my heart broke multiple times, I laughed, I got angry, I love this book.

My favourite read of 2022, without a doubt!

The audiobook was also really well voiced.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish this audiobook but the narrator is fantastic. I’m excited to finish the book soon!

An emotionally devastating novel about a sensitive, gay teen growing up in working class Glasgow, circa early 1990s. Mungo is the youngest of three children in a Protestant family, cared for by his smart, ambitious sister Jodie and terrorized by his violent gang leader brother Hamish. Though Mungo adores his alcoholic mother, Maureen (Mo-Maw), she is largely absent from his life as she disappears on benders or takes up with new men, leaving him and Jodie with no food and unpaid bills. His unhealthy, codependent relationship with his self-centered mother is one of the cornerstones of the novel.
This already precarious existence is truly rocked when Mungo falls in love with James, a slightly older Catholic boy who keeps pigeons as a hobby. Of course, this sweet and tender first romance cannot withstand the twin forces of homophobia and religious bigotry that are rampant in Mungo's world. And one reads on with an impending sense of dread as to what horrible fates await these two teens.
The structure of the book builds on this uneasy suspense, opening with Mungo being sent away with two strange men, his mother waving him off from their tenement window. The author moves back and forth in time, from this mysterious trip that slowly unfolds, to the previous events leading up to it.
Trigger warnings galore for Young Mungo...sexual abuse, child abuse, extreme violence. This is not an easy read at all, but a very powerful one.
The audiobook is beautifully read by Chris Reilly, but this is one I would have preferred reading (if only to skim through some of the more violent sections). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced audiobook recording in exchange for my review.

Young Mungo shares many of the same elements as Stuart’s predecessor and Booker prize-winning Shuggie Bain - the alcoholic and oft-absent mother of three children, the poverty stricken setting of 1980s Glasgow, and the homophobia which existed, and still exists, in Scotland and beyond. What I got from Mungo, which for me was missing from Shuggie, was a spark of hope despite the trauma our protagonist experiences. This highlighted for me the strength and resilience that people in minorities such as the LGBTQ+ community exhibit time and again, even when everything may seem hopeless.

The supporting cast of characters was for me much stronger in Young Mungo than in Shuggie. We had a deeper understanding of of the sibling characters, Hamish (Ha-Ha) and Jodie and their motivations, each of whom had a significant impact on Mungo. Many of the siblings’ issues stem from Mo-Maw, who abandons the family on and off for long spells of time. Mungo’s sweet relationship with James in the safe space of the pigeon dovecot and across the sectarian divide highlights a direct contrast to the dark events of the camping trip.

As an English teacher in Scotland I believe this novel should be in every English classroom, to allow pupils to connect with challenging themes and complex characters through Stuart’s engaging prose.

This is a heart-breaking, beautifully written novel with characters which will stay with readers for a long time.

In a Glasgow housing estate, Mungo Hamilton lives under the thumb of his gang-leader brother, is doted on by his clever sister and yearns for the love of his absent mother. Suppressed by the masculine nature of his surroundings, it's only when he meets James and the pigeon dovecote that he learns about himself and what he wants. Despite being Protestant and Catholic, the boys start falling in love and dream of leaving the grey city but everyone has a reputation they want to maintain.

Making another of her impulsive decisions, Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip with two strange men from her AA group, not knowing the extent of their murky pasts.

This book is full of beautiful, evocate description that highlights just how brutal and raw the story is. It feels like the telling of a secret story, one that has been hushed up for years but needs to be told.

The way every character has their situation, motives and emotions explored, alongside Mungo's, makes for a rich narrative that brings to life the complexity of people. Many characters are deeply unlikeable but they all have a place in this intricate plot.

Reilly's narration is good, using appropriate accents shifts to suit the changes in character (different regions of Scotland and English). However, whilst this change is sufficient for one-time characters, there isn't enough of a difference between the voices used for the core characters. As such, fifteen-year-old Mungo sounds the same as a weathered fifty-year-old man.

Young Mungo is beautifully written and heartbreaking to read. I read Douglas Stuart’s first novel, Shuggie Bain, earlier this year and loved it, but I think that Young Mungo is somehow even better. So much is captured, both beauty and ugliness, violence and hatred and also love. It was at times difficult to read, I had to put it down for a bit because of what happened in it. But it was a very good, but difficult, read. Douglas Stuart is an incredibly talented writer who is able to capture the beauty in what many people would only see as ugly.
I also received an arc for the audiobook which I played along while reading. I don’t have much to say about it, I thought having a Scottish narrator helped to transport you into the story. Although at some points I felt the narration was a bit flat and lacked emotion, overall I didn’t have much of an effect on my reading experience.