In the suspenseful opening to Douglas Stuart’s second novel, Young Mungo, it is not clear if 15-year-old Mungo is being abducted or freely going with the two men who collect him from his mother.
After the first dozen or so pages, it gradually becomes apparent that the men, “two alkies” that his mother had met at a meeting of Alcoholics’ Anonymous, are walking him through the suburbs of Glasgow with her permission, taking him out of town on a fishing expedition for “masculine pursuits”. The men’s distorted interpretation of that phrase is revealed only in the second half of the novel.
