Douglas Stuart’s second novel appears hard on the heels of 2020’s Shuggie Bain, a Booker prize winner with strong claims to instant-classic status, and is similar in a number of ways. Mungo Hamilton, like Shuggie, is born in the late 1970s and grows up in a tenement in Glasgow, a crabbed but oddly magical locale, with an older sister (Jodie), an older brother (Hamish) and an erratic “alkahawlick” mother to whom he is devoted (Mo-Maw). Again Stuart proves himself a wonderfully gifted writer, a virtuoso describer with a more or less infinite supply of tender detail and elegant phrasing. But Young Mungo, though immersive and rarely dull, emerges as a chaotic cousin to its straight‑shooting predecessor, and offers an altogether bumpier experience.
The key event is Mungo’s encounter during the winter half-term break with James Jamieson, a slightly older Catholic boy who keeps a dovecote near the grounds of the housing scheme where they live. Mungo and James fall in love and plan to escape as soon as Mungo turns 16, but their bond is doubly star-crossed. Mungo cannot tell which would be considered the worse betrayal in the eyes of his fearsome brother Hamish – that James is male or that he’s “Fenian”.
