Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart: book review
I'll preface this review by saying that I picked up this novel on the endorsement of a friend. A very enthusiastic endorsement. She read the book after three of us went to see Douglas Stuart speak (he was incredible) and then insisted I read it so we could talk about it (I'd bought John of John at the event, which was the book of Stuart's I thought I was most likely to like being about small islands and textiles and religious trauma. It's still on my TBR). While I love getting recommendations from friends, I do think I struggle with going into books with pre-set expectations. I say all this to preface that my opinion is my own, born of my subjective experiences and taste, and that I personally know two people who deeply and enthusiastically love this novel. I feel like that's only a fair reminder to begin with because the places where I struggled with this novel largely came from a purely personal place.
While I didn't enjoy reading Young Mungo and probably would've put it aside around the 50 page mark if I hadn't promised to read it, I don't think it's the fault of the novel, necessarily. I have my quibbles with it on a technical level, sure, but I think a lot of it just comes down to what I'm looking for in the books I read for fun right now. Teenage-me would've been much more receptive to this book. I used to almost exclusively read very heavy YA books about living with mental illness, about navigating homophobia as a young teen, sexual assault, and difficult family situations—all the reviews are still here. These are all themes addressed in this novel as well, though it is one for adults. The darker the book, the more compelling I found it. I just don't operate in the same way now. Through life experiences and just changing as a person, I no longer seek out books that are deeply entrenched in unreconcilable pain. While I don't think that anything should be changed about Young Mungo in that respect—it captures a portrait of a specific time, place, and family in a way that is important, showing life in Glasgow's East End in the nineties—it is incredibly heavy to take on as a reader, especially if you have personal experience with any of the above, and I'm realizing that now, being an adult, I have much more of a stomach for watching adults navigate the bleak realities of life. It was incredibly hard to sit in this novel in the retrospective teenage perspective.
My heart ached for Mungo at every single dark and darker turn. If you think it couldn't get worse for Mungo at any point in the novel, think again. Even the moments of light that Stuart offers us to keep the suffocating in the darkness of his older brother's gang violence, his sister's troubles, his mother's alcoholism, and the bleak dead end future Mungo is already being presented before he's even sixteen, there is a foreboding sense that the darkness will eventually infect the light as well.
At its core, this is a Romeo and Juliet story, both in that Mungo falls in love with another boy, which will never be accepted, and that the boy is a Catholic when Mungo is a Protestant, something that cannot be abided where he lives, even in a potential friendship. I kept reading for the glimmers of light, Mungo and James learning about pigeons at his doocot, the moments where Mungo comes to understand why life is worth living when he's been offered very little compelling proof in his short life.
I spent the entire novel just feeling horrible for everyone involved. My heart twisted for Mungo, a soft, caring fifteen-year-old boy living in the worst environment he could possibly be in. For James, who lost his mother and had been all but abandoned by his father. For Jodie, Mungo's sister, who has to act more like his mom and faces trials of her own that shouldn't be put upon a teenager as she struggles just to get to university.. I felt less sympathy for the oldest brother, Hamish, who gives in wholeheartedly to the abusive culture he's raised in, scrapping to be a leader rather than be crushed beneath the heap. I understand him, though, and I know why he's chosen this path. It's self preservation. I struggle most with understanding their mother. She has been deeply hurt as well but the unending well of selfishness that springs from her is purely infuriating, and I don't think we spend enough time with her to understand beyond a surface level set of assumptions why she acts in the way she does. To me, she came off as a relatively flat character.
With the constant unfolding of events throughout the book and the shifting of perspectives around Mungo, though, I felt like we never fully got under anyone's skin. We learned their biographical information, bits of their histories, the small choices they made in the moment, but I never felt like the book settled in one place long enough to create a true depth. I struggled to feel really embedded in the novel even as the book actively made me sad and upset every time I picked it up.
While there is a glimmer at the end, a suggestion of the smallest ray of hope, the mere possibility of some selflessness arriving to the older members of the Hamilton family, it almost feels patched on. I did hear Stuart say in an interview that the ending was not his original plan. Even the author had become overwhelmed by the unrelenting bleakness of the story and wanted to find a possible avenue for hope.
I just don't think that these are the stories I'm in a headspace for anymore. I respected it as a portrait of a time. I admire Stuart for writing it, in a way, almost as a piece of history, to assert these are the things that happened. But I was grateful to be done with it.
On a technical level, the book did start in an awkward spot, launching into the fishing trip that Mungo leaves for at the end of the other alternating timeline before we have context for the characters and the world. They always say to start a story in the middle of the action, but this wasn't action that helped me learn about the characters in the world. I just felt like I was being swept down the river.
It felt like the book didn't properly find its footing until James's arrival. It spends a long time circling instances of the family's disfunction repetitively. This repetition seems to be a hallmark of Stuart's writing as there are many repetitive descriptions across the book where a character might be physically described at the top of the page and then the same notes on their appearance is given again at the bottom of the page. This gave the book an unnecessary density.
I also thought that the head-hopping was an interesting choice. I never found it to feel fully intentional, like there was a real quality of omniscience going. We so rarely wander out of Mungo's head and these instances are not well defined, giving it a kind of accidental quality. I also found it curious whose minds we could visit and whose we could not. Like if we were going to mind wander, why not take us into Hamish's psychology, as that ends up being incredibly important to the arc of the novel and might have contextualized the rushed ending. I think this did ultimately keep me feeling more distanced from the characters rather than closer.
This wasn't a hit for me, but I do think a lot of it came down to time and headspace. And I think that no longer being a teenager, I just struggle with seeing so much bad be heaped on someone so young. When I was reading really heavy YA books, I didn't quite have the understanding of how teenagers, yes, are so resilient, but I think it's all easier to stomach before you know just how much the events in this time will affect the rest of your life. You assume that you and everyone else will grow up and move on, and you do, to an extent, but it stays closer than you think.
This just wasn't the book for me. I didn't quite mesh with the writing, and I think I just wanted to love it more than I did.
To its credit, my friends and I now send each other pictures of pigeons to which the other replies "Mungo!" every time, so even in the dark, sadness of the book, it's beloved enough to generate its own lightness.
Overall: 3.5
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