DOUGLAS STUART Young Mungo. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The author of the Booker-winning Shuggie Bain returns to the streets of Glasgow in his second novel.
This is a grim but compelling coming-of-age novel about a teenage boy, set over a year in Glasgow. The book opens as Mungo looks up at his mother’s window as he passes below with two men. They are going on a camping trip to a lake. Mungo looks up despairingly, willing his mother to release him from the men. Though Glaswegian, they are strangers to him and the neighbourhood. They look up at the window seeking the mother’s approval as they put their arms around Mungo’s shoulders. He shrugs them off, but she mouths at him to just get going, and he gives up and walks off with them.
The two men idled at the bend. They shared a sigh and a glance and a chuckle, before putting down their bags and lighting cigarettes. Mo-Maw could tell they were itchy to be gone – these narrow streets didn’t like unknown faces – and she could see it took patience not to goad her boy on. The men were canny enough not to pressure Mungo, not so close to home, not when he could still bolt. Their slitted eyes kept flicking towards him, watching, waiting to see what the boy would do next, while their hands ferreted inside their trouser pockets as they peeled their ball sacks from their thighs. The day would be muggy and close. The younger man fiddled with himself. Mo-Maw licked the back of her bottom teeth.
The story unfolds the events that have brought Mungo to the attention of the two men, which lead to a brutal and violent denouement.
Mungo lives in the tenements of Glasgow; he has never been to the West End. His mother is an alcoholic who has temporarily abandoned her family in order to work late nights in a food truck and pursue an uneasy relationship with the truck’s owner. Mungo is mothered by his older sister Jodie and bullied by his older brother Hamish.
Mungo, named after a Catholic saint, is a sweet character who drifts aimlessly. He is the youngest of his mother’s children, and seemingly the only one who loves her. She was only 15 when she had Hamish, her eldest, and she resents her lost childhood. She happily renounces her children, including Mungo, when she needs a drink or money. A mean drunk, she is dubbed Mo-Maw by her children. Presently she is living with her employer, who is unaware that she is the mother of three children.
Hamish has fathered a child to a 15 year old and lives at her mother’s flat as they await their own residence. Short and wiry, and wearing coke-bottle glasses, he is vicious and leads a gang of teenagers who battle the police and Catholic gangs. He tries to harden up Mungo and browbeats him into being part of the bloody fighting.
Jodie is a sensible young woman, doing well at school and hoping to go to university, but already aware that her background and circumstances mean she is going nowhere. In their mother’s absence she tries to anchor Mungo and care for him.
Jodie stared at her mother with such intensity that Mo-Maw turned to Mungo and asked if she had something on her face.
‘Are you living with him? This Jocky?’ Jodie asked. ‘I mean, I suppose you are living with him, but why?’
‘How no? Jesus Christ. A’hm only thirty-four Jo-Jo.’ Mungo knew his sister hated this pet name, she said it made her sound like a dancing monkey. ‘You’ll be seventeen in a couple of months. Ah was potty-training Hamish when ah was your age. What’s the harm in it, eh? Jocky treats me right, he takes me for a Chinese – starters and mains.’
‘Prawn crackers, too?’ asked Mungo.
‘Aye. And a banana fritter if I like.’ Mo-Maw turned her gaze back to Jodie. ‘Ah’ve got to try and squeeze a wee bit of happiness out of life while ah still can.’
Jodie nodded across the table at Mungo. Her face was wet from the rain, it gave it a waxy pallor and her expression was alarmingly calm. ‘He’s only fifteen. You’re not done raising your weans yet, ya selfish besom.’ It was happening again. This pitched battle between Jodie and Mo-Maw over Mungo. He felt forever in the middle. At any moment they might both get on their knees and try to lure him towards one of them with a bit of salted ham hock, like a dog.
This is a novel about poverty and brutality. Dreamy, gentle Mungo floats unsteadily through life, seeking love and affection. The consequences of this search, and the novel, come about when he falls into a relationship with James, a pigeon-loving Catholic schoolboy, and the two of them begin to meet in James’s dovecote. As his relationship with James grows more intense, Hamish becomes aware of the time that Mungo is spending with him. Hamish threatens James and tells him to stay away from Mungo. He insists that Mungo join him in the next organised foray into Catholic territory, and lets Mungo know that if he doesn’t, he will bash James and burn down the dovecote.
The novel moves between this timeline and Mungo’s trip into the Scottish countryside with the two men, who are violent and desperate. They are virtual strangers to Mungo’s mother, members of her AA group, but she turns to them to straighten out her son when she becomes aware of his relationship with James. It becomes clear very early in the novel that Mungo is in danger and, as the backstory unfolds, he is subjected to brutal behaviour and threats from the men.
In the final pages there is redemption for the family and hope for Mungo. It’s no fairytale ending, but it is realistic and optimistic. This is a tightly controlled novel, beautifully written and structured. Mungo and his family’s story is engrossing and will stay with the reader for a long time.
Douglas Stuart Young Mungo Picador 2022 PB 400pp $32.99
Michael Jongen is a librarian who tweets as @michael_jongen
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