Young Mungo
Book description
A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart's first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or…
Why read it?
3 authors picked Young Mungo as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a raw, gritty, and unflinching story of a teenage boy who finds forbidden love against the odds in a deprived area of Glasgow.
The two boys are divided by so much that a future seems impossible. The world the author describes is both beautiful and ugly and the camping trip just about broke my heart. I was just enthralled the whole way through. The ending isn’t as unclear as some think, at least not to me. I closed the book with a smile on my face.
It feels wrong to enjoy a book like this…
Set in 1990s working-class Glasgow, Young Mungo depicts a queer love story blossoming against the rising tensions of religious clashes, gang wars, and class struggles.
Tenderly written and brilliantly paced, the novel also depicts one of the most beautiful sibling relationships. Watch for: the two gangs (one protestant and the other catholic) facing off on a historic bridge in Glasgow and the scene where Mungo meets James in, wait for it, a dovecote.
From Shastri's list on international queer heroes.
This book was so good I immediately read it a second time. First, I read it for the story, then for the beauty of Stuart’s writing.
Although the novel is set in Glasgow and I grew up in rural Nebraska, I related to the young Mungo in so many ways. He grew up poor in a single-parent home. Hyper-masculine values dominated, and he was confused and frightened by his romantic interest in another boy.
It is a story of the bounds of masculinity, the push from and pull toward one’s home, and the dangers of loving another man. The story…
From Loren's list on for mature men who have sex with men.
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