Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

JOINT REVIEW ~ YOUNG MUNGO

The most beautiful gut punch of a book, Young Mungo genuinely left us blinking back stinging tears. An instant number one bestseller, from the @thebookerprizes winner @douglas_stuartthis is a story of mothers and their children, how family shapes us and the ramifications of forbidden love in a climate of fraught intensity and poverty. We are certain you will fall head over heels for the beautiful boy with the twitch. You will continue to think about him. You will feel like you know him as well as you know those closest to you.

And Mungo is one of several; the bespectacled Ha-Ha, twisted with a frightening violence yet interwoven with complex loyalty. Jodie, a sister-turned-mother, who you will want to hug close as she seeks to escape but continues to care for Mungo with such tenderness. And then James, now motherless, the boy on the next street. The boy who will change everything. And of course, Mo Maw. We can see her so clearly, so vividly has she been painted painted by Stuart, she’s here on the couch as we type up these words.

These are the characters that pepper the streets of Glasgow, though Stuart has ensured the city looms as a character itself, always there. This book is a tough read — raw and grit are meshed with a bleakness that is palpable. But there is hope here, still, in this story which is, in every possible way, a true literary triumph. We bloody loved it ~ S & C

AD: PR advance copy sent to us by the wonderful @picadorbooks with no obligation to review.