Young Mungo: The No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller

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Booklist(starred review) “After the splendid Shuggie Bain, Stuart continues his examination of 1980s Glaswegian working-class life and a son’s attachment to an alcohol-ravaged mother, with results as good yet distinctly different . The writing is evocative and liberally sprinkled with colourful similes and descriptions and the authentic dialogue very much captures the mood of the time. It’s a testament to Stuart’s unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can’t possibly anticipate how very badly—and baroquely—things will turn out. Bizarre technique cannot crowd out the energy of Stuart’s characters or the organic force of his teeming world.

Douglas Stuart opens our eyes, minds, and hearts to fear, love, family brokenness, manliness, manhood, masculinity, (gut wrenching examination from every angle) > fragile, rugged, confidence, power, force, muscled, typical traits, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’……a deep look at the traditional and negative effects. Yen Pham, New York Times Book Review “ Young Mungo is a finer novel than its predecessor, offering many of the same pleasures, but with a more sure-footed approach to narrative and a finer grasp of prose. The title Loch Awe referenced the fishing trip that Mungo takes in the novel and, according to the author, was changed to Young Mungo to denote the protagonist, the same approach as in Shuggie Bain, as Stuart claimed the two works formed a single "tapestry" alongside this novel. At one point, when Mungo is waiting for the “proverbial penny to drop” in a conversation with Hamish, there’s a 118-word description of a slot machine at “Mo-Maw’s favourite bingo” which creates a similar – albeit literal – coin-induced sense of anticipation.

In 2000, he moved to New York to work as a fashion designer for Calvin Klein and went on to become vice-president of design at Kate Spade. In a world where the days are “dreich” and everything happens in a haze of “smirr”, love is – as one character knowingly observes – the light that “through yonder window breaks”. 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. Both books feature domestic abuse, rape, sexual abuse of minors by those in a position of authority over them - although here (and I think largely reflecting the older age of the point of view character) these are more explicit/graphic.

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. It was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Scottish Highland Literary Award.His sister does the best she can to fill the kindness void, but she's barely older than Mungo by the calendar. Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times “The working-class 1980s Glasgow of Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning debut Shuggie Bain is again the setting of his follow-up Young Mungo, and with it come the violence, religious tribalism, economic depression, diehard loyalties and fatalistic humor of the era, all expressed in the crooked poetry of Glaswegian dialect . But it’s such a sad, deep, dark, ugly, depressing story, I had to force myself to keep with it at times. I usually enjoy reading grey characters but this time, not a single one of them gained my loyalty or sympathy. Religion plays a role in both with interestingly mothers that seem far less concerned at crossing the religious divide than those around them.

But Stuart makes the small differences count, of which the most important is that Mungo is older than Shuggie, and beginning to see in his sexuality not just a source of difference and alienation but a possible route to escape and emancipation. I loved those first moments when Mungo and James comforted each other, and they made me forget the darkness and the heartbreaking moments for a while. Were it not for Mungo being a queer teenage boy, he likely would have followed in the footsteps of his brother and remained tethered to the toxic world of his upbringing.The blurb makes it seem like it's a forbidden love story between a Protestant boy and a Catholic one.

Shuggie Bain was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction, the Pen Hemingway Award, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, The Rathbones Folio, the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. I read this book in small pieces, put it away, hugged my family (or my cats), and then dove in again because I wanted to be back with Mungo. But then any mention of potential triggers to alert sensitive readers will spoil the plot for savvy readers, especially as this is a book that pivots on certain key events.But it is also about the narrowness and failure of vision in a place where individuals cannot imagine a better life, where people have never been outside their own neighborhood .