Canceled — Story/Teller: Douglas Stuart on Young Mungo with John Cameron Mitchell

Douglas Stuart’s extraordinary second novel, Young Mungo is the product of five years of writing, begun when Shuggie Bain was between drafts and uncertain if it would even see publication. Recipient of four starred pre-publication reviews, Young Mungo is both a page-turner and literary tour de force, a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James.

Born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—they should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his older brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. And when several months later Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland, together with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Young Mungo is not a sequel to Shuggie, but it shares some connecting threads. Stuart is fascinated by queer, working-class lives shaped by poverty and lack of opportunity. He explores how the stakes for being gay are so much higher for people who cannot simply escape to a friendly cosmopolitan city, asking the question: what does it mean when you don’t belong in the only place you belong?

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.