Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart

Wow this was an emotional, distressing and beautiful book. Set in the working class housing estates in Glasgow in super homophobic, violent and masculine environment, we meet Mungo, a young Protestant boy who is a bit different to his siblings and friends. The book has dual timelines - one in the present where Mungo is sent to go on a fishing trip with two strangers who have dark secrets, and the second focuses on Mungo’s past and his relationship with a Catholic boy called James. The two timelines finally meet in the last chapters of the book. I really recommend looking into trigger warnings for this book if you have any particular topics you want to avoid - as this is a very violent, upsetting, graphic and traumatic book that is filled with suffering, and has been compared to A Little Life in that sense. However, there were still moments of beauty and hope and I didn’t find myself being too upset afterwards! I was really blown away by the writing which is so beautiful, and I can’t wait to read Shuggie Bain in the future!

How accessible is it?

I listened to this as an audiobook, and found it very gripping and easy to follow. There are very few characters in the story which makes it easier to keep track of everything! It is told in the third person, past tense. The dialogue in the book is written with a Glaswegian accent/dialect which might make reading a bit more difficult for some people - so perhaps the audiobook version would avoid this problem. An example of the dialogue logue:

“Haw. Dinnae be botherin’ wi’ auld St Christopher”.