Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates

Product Information

Being a neurodivergent person, Mungo fixates on his too-young, too-broken mother for whatever guideposts she can offer; she sucks the whole of his lovingkindness down like her genuine love, fortified wine, and gives none back. Okay, maybe my expectations were too high after Shuggie Bain, but while Stuart still excells at atmospheric writing and nuanced dialogue, the plot is frustratingly predictable and the main character is simply another version of Shuggie, but a bit older, so the aspect of him realizing that he is gay becomes central to the story. His older brother is a violent criminal, his sister has an affair with a teacher (the outcome of which is exactly what you would expect). And this ties in to another element – the first book was deliberately almost circular in plot and effectively repetitive in its form: tracing the story of Anges’s many brief recoveries from and longer relapses into alcohol addiction.

Mungobooks - AbeBooks - Poole Mungobooks - AbeBooks - Poole

This is the author’s second book, one largely written, if not fully completed, at the time of “Shuggie Bain's" success (although at the time it was under the working title “Loch Awe”) – and if anything my quote is even truer of this novel which is both at times lighter but also in places much darker than its predecessor and which also reads very much as one cut from the same literary cloth. Sole survivor of the Ballantyne family, who had farmed in the Zambezi valley for a hundred years, he fled the country when the bush war ended, and now he has lost his way.With echoes of Shuggie Bain, the main character here is Mungo, a 15-year-old gay teenager, coming of age in an environment where any deviation from a narrowly defined masculinity is perilous. In the course of the book Mungo will meet and fall in love with James, who is a pigeon fancier, more comfortable with his sexuality and – drum roll – a Catholic. If he was surprised to see Mungo with a poker raised like a weapon, Fairchild wrestling him for it and Manners kneeling helpless at his feet, he made no comment. Their brief three-day interlude of mutual self-discovery is wrought with great delicacy and feeling, which makes the violence and horror this bubble of love and trust is embedded in all the more terrible as it unfolds so inexorably. The way that Stuart builds towards exquisite set pieces, moments in time that take on an almost visionary aspect; the powerful and evocative descriptions of sex and nature in language that soars without ever feeling forced or purple; the manner in which he binds you into the lives of his characters, making even the most brutal and self-interested members of the family somehow not only forgivable, but lovable.

Book review: Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart - The Scotsman Book review: Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart - The Scotsman

When a reader touches the page, this clever, innovative digital pen reads out the text – in English, French, Polish, Arabic. Young Mungo operates a dual narrative, with chapters alternating between a fishing trip that Mungo takes with two friends of his mother and a more expansive history of Mungo’s life leading up to this point. Critics, armchair and otherwise, have not only been decrying ‘Young Mungo’ as ‘Shuggie Bain’ in a different cagoule, but are already lamenting the poor departed muse of author Douglas Stuart, who seems perpetually fixated on Glasgow. The obvious conclusion is that the man intuits Mungo’s sexuality, but the scene occurs long after its undertones have been exhaustively established.Strangely, the book reminded me of Hanya Yanagihara, as Stuart pushes Mungo's suffering so far that you deem this Saint Mungo to be a martyr, and it's all a bit much - granted, I loved A Little Life, but this book is so intentionally over the top that it counts an experiment in extreme pychological wriring and you might even debate whether there's a camp aspect to it, which isn't the case in "Young Mungo". Dreams of Empire, desire for land and its hidden mineral wealth and for power over a proud and warlike people: such were the forces that drove Englishmen in Queen Victoria's last years to thrust deep into an untamed continent and found a new dominion. The Kamishibai Storytelling Theatre and Mungo Story Props are brilliant resources for collaborative learning and oracy - learning techniques encouraged by Michael Rosen.