Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
Upon first reading Young Mungo (2022), the sophomore novel by Booker Prize-winning Scotsman Douglas Stuart, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d been here before. Readers of Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (2020) will recognise much of the iconic cast return in Young Mungo. The world is the same desperate, violent Glasgow of the Thatcher era, where Protestants and Catholics brawl viciously and unrelentingly for honour, territory and because it is “fuckin’ good fun”. The Hamilton family, whose youngest son is the titular Mungo, is an almost like-for-like replica of the Bain’s: there is the “alkahawlick” pretty but bitter young mother, Maureen, known as Mo-Maw; Hamish, older brother and gang leader, in hiding from the “polis” after unhinging the jaw of one officer with a brick; and Jodie, Mungo’s pragmatic and determined sister, who quietly keeps everything together until she earns a ticket to a better life. Even Mungo – painfully shy, a second behind everyone else, and bearing an unrivalled and ruinous love for his mother – is, clearly, the second coming of Shuggie.
But where Shuggie Bain might well have instead been called Agnes Bain after his mother, Young Mungo is fixed solely on Mungo and his Glasgow. And where Shuggie Bain sought to find compassion in a difficult world through the eyes of a young boy, Young Mungo emerges as the mature sequel, and is decidedly less hopeful for it.
The book is divided into two parts: ‘The May After’ and ‘The January Before’. This structure is used to introduce the two simultaneous storylines that carry the narrative forward – although, this is temporarily jarring once chapter three reverts inexplicably from ‘The January Before’ to ‘The May After.’ In the events of ‘The May After,’ Mungo is sent on a weekend fishing trip with two objectionable, poorly vetted members of Mo-Maw’s AA club, known only as Gallowgate and St Christopher. ‘The January Before’ documents Mungo falling in love with a Catholic boy, James, as the star-crossed lovers start to suspect there might be hope for their happiness after all. Meanwhile, Mungo is being enlisted by Hamish to do battle against James’ Catholics, or else risk the safety and promise of the life that Mungo has begun to see might be possible.
With scathing insight, Stuart delivers a Glasgow short on patience. Decency is a luxury here, and Stuart’s fixation on Mungo’s sensitive soul allows the impact of Glasgow’s aggression, injustices and commensurate lack of empathy to be more deeply felt. Throughout the before and after, there is little room for kindness in a world hell-bent on survival.
The duelling storylines work effectively in tandem. Both are compelling enough to drive Young Mungo toward the narrative’s conclusion. Despite this, sections of Stuart’s prose are overly preoccupied with making sure the reader understands the subtext. For example, about halfway through the book (and falling in love with James), Mungo wonders what it was, “about Catholics that made them so different? What was it he was supposed to hate in them?” Again, as a tense Mungo waits for Hamish to comprehend who James is and the nature of Mungo’s relationship with him, Stuart distracts us by discussing a device from Mungo’s childhood – one that either accepted or spat out pennies – so the reader might better grasp that Mungo is waiting for “Hamish’s proverbial penny to drop”. While Young Mungo is often brilliant, either its author doesn’t quite trust his readers, or is yet to confidently strike the balance between literary rendering and a novel’s accessibility.
Despite these instances, Stuart’s work remains adroit and skilfully nuanced. Many of the novel’s themes are sustained effectively and cohesively throughout the novel. Many of his characters notably exhibit physical qualities that hint at a tendency or trait that would otherwise go unmentioned. The worrisome, overburdened Jodie develops a nervous tic, snorting “Haaah-ha” at poorly timed occasions, while the bull-headed and parochial Hamish must wear “thick government lenses”. Then there is ‘Poor-Wee-Chickie’ Calhoun, a local “bachelor”, who can’t help the constant and “slight feathering” of his fingertips – an indicator of his sexual proclivities. Even the hulking Mr Campbell, a minor character who only rises from his chair twice, both times rises when summoned by violence. Mungo himself is plagued by a restless tic beneath his eye that “spark(s) out a telegraph”, while privately he struggles to connect. Mungo is also betrayed by something inexplicable and innate, something that broadcasts his sexuality to others, giving them the chance to manipulate it. Where was it, he is left wondering, “this signal he could not see, the semaphore he had never meant to send?”
But here’s the rub. While the covert communication between bodies might seem a virtue in a world lacking vulnerability and empathy, what Stuart expertly reveals instead is the imperturbable and systematic neglect of these bodies. Routinely and repeatedly, even the most minute exchanges between characters reflects the ever-present zero-sum stakes of living in poverty. While Young Mungo is a tender love story, it is also a tale of casualties.
At its darkest, Young Mungo is heart-wrenching, gritty and bleak. But like the purest forms of love, there is hope enough to lighten the darker passages. And it’s the hope that gets you through.
Joshua Klarica is a writer from Sydney, Australia. He writes poetry, essays, and fiction, and recently finished up his honours year studying English Literature at The University of Sydney. His work can be found across the internet, and in Australian and international journals such as Mascara Literary Review, Backstory, Bluebottle Journal, and Wild Court. In 2020, he won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize. Find him online at joshuaklarica.com.