When we first meet Mungo Hamilton, the title character of Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo, his mother is sending him away for a weekend of fishing with two men Mungo doesn't know. The book then goes back and forth between the present and the past to tell the story of just why Mungo had to be sent away.
This was a hard book to get through, not just because it was long. The characters' speech is written in Glaswegian dialect, which took some getting used to, and the subject matter was often difficult to stomach: child abuse, alcoholism, violence.
I almost didn't think I'd be able to finish the book after the first chapter, but once the story moved back into the past and I got to know Mungo, his two older siblings, his alcoholic single mother, and his neighbors, I started to really like this novel. I had trouble deciphering the time that this story takes place - I think it's the 90s? And not being from Scotland, I wasn't always sure how to picture what the author was describing in terms of the city and the place where Mungo's family lived.
This is a story about trying to be who you are when everybody else wants you to be something else. Mungo's brother wants Mungo to be a fighter, forcing him to go out and incite violence against the Catholics. Mungo doesn't want to fight, and even moreso after he becomes friends with a Catholic boy - a relationship that becomes dangerous not because of the two boys' religions but because the boys develop more than just a friendship. You're rooting for Mungo (and his friend - and Mungo's sister, for that matter), and I think the ending leaves a lot to discuss, should you choose to read this book as part of a book club.
Young Mungo is published by Grove Press and is available for purchase now. I received a free ARC.
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