Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart

100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: Mungo and James aren’t like other boys in their rough and tumble Glasgow neighborhood, but against all odds they find each other, and the hope a brighter future could lie ahead.

Expectation: Given the setting, time period and queer themes, an unofficial sequel to Douglas Stuart’s debut “Shuggie Bain.”

Reality: Better paced than “Shuggie Bain,” a truly shocking plot twist about halfway through made this somewhat of a thriller, and Stuart allowed his characters to find a little happiness — a nice change of pace.

Recommended For: Fans of “Shuggie Bain” and U.K. literature.

Why I Read It: I didn’t know that I wanted to read this after the depressing roller coaster of “Shuggie Bain,” so I’m glad the early positive reviews didn’t lie.

My Take:

I’m tempted to call Douglas Stuart a one-trick pony since “Young Mungo,” and “Shuggie Bain,” the novel’s depressing, yet captivating predecessor, share many of the same beats: Sexually confused teenage boy — check. Alcoholic and absentee mother — check. Indifferent siblings — check. A bleak view of life in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1980s — check.

Unfortunately, it also includes a few elements of “Shuggie Bain” I could’ve done without: difficult to understand Glaswegian dialect; inconsistent and incomplete POV shifts; depictions of child sexual assault; and rampant homophobia and sexism.

Still, if this is Stuart’s only trick, sign me up again and again.

There are not many writers than can take you to dark places and hold you there, but Stuart, smartly, spends as much time building the world our characters live in as he does the characters themselves, so the injustices in their experiences — both self-made and circumstantial — feel entirely plausible for a single group to endure.

For as difficult as “Young Mungo” is to stomach at times, I enjoyed it more than “Shuggie Bain.” Outside of the first third, which is slightly confusing with timeline shifts and characters introduced almost all at once, the story morphs into a well-paced, tense thriller with a central romance.

When we meet Mungo, he’s being sent to the Highlands to “man-up” on a camping trip with two of his mother’s friends from Alcoholics Anonymous. We don’t learn until later why he’s being sent away, but it’s safe to assume it has something to do with James, his best friend and pigeon fancier.

In true Stuart fashion, Mungo’s mother, Mo-Maw, didn’t think this through, entrusting two convicted pedophiles with his care. Terrible things happen to Mungo on that trip, but with the trauma also comes a resolve to live openly and freely.

It’s no surprise that Stuart uses pigeons to represent the boys. Symbolically they can mean transformation, freedom and luck – three qualities our characters earn and embrace in the end. But know the road there isn’t easy and is, at times, gut-wrenching.

I’d go as far as to say the budding love between Mungo and James was a homage to “West Side Story,” — complete with a Protestant vs. Catholic rumble — and the final moments in the dovecote broke my heart in two, not unlike Maria crying over Tony.

Still, I left the story hopeful these two would be okay one day. I particularly enjoyed Mungo’s encounter with the farmer who gives him permission to be himself and love himself — two things neither boy had ever been told before.

Outside of Mungo and James, only Jodie — Mungo’s older sister — were developed fully, but even she got tossed aside in the last third after slowly building momentum. Mo-Maw felt like a rehash of Agnes, Shuggie’s mother, and Hamish, Mungo’s older brother, was a caricature of a miscreant.

All told, Stuart showed a lot of improvement here, and by his third novel — that will probably also take place in 1980s Glasgow — he’ll fix the awkward POV shifts and half-developed characters. Then, he’ll have his first masterpiece.

While I read “Shuggie Bain” in all its Glaswegian dialect glory, I opted to listen to “Young Mungo.” Chris Reilly provides the listener with an authentic Scottish accent, which is both engaging and somewhat difficult to track.

I’ve spent time in Scotland and it took me listening at 1.25x speed and a fair amount of concentration to ensure I was interpreting the story correctly. Honestly, I probably only understood about 85 percent of the words as intended. All that to say, reading is likely the way to go.

Rating (story): 4/5 stars

Rating (narration): 4/5 stars

Formats: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: June 7 – June 12, 2022

Multi-tasking: Fine, but only for activities that still allow you to concentrate on Chris Reilly’s authentic Scottish accent.