Love and Misery. A Human Experience.
Love and Misery. A Human Experience.
Let Glasgow Flourish.
That’s the city motto of the setting, once again, of Douglas Stuart’s YOUNG MUNGO, his remarkably dark and resilient follow-up to his award-winning debut, SHUGGIE BAIN. And like the city that nurtured Stuart and all his characters, YOUNG MUNGO becomes the tale of a child trying to flourish, and the people, the things, the events, the economics, the politics, all those family ties, that trip and pull and beat one into submission. A tale of the first breath of love, and the forces that seek to drown it. A story about what it takes to keep your head above water - gasping, grasping, surviving one beat at a time - and daring to believe you deserve love despite all the odds against it and in spite of every indication from others that you are not worthy of it.
The title character is named after the Patron Saint of
Glasgow. Saints come in varieties, but
they are usually of two kinds: they
spent their lives spreading so much love and goodwill towards men that they
must have been sent from Heaven Itself, or they were tested by the fires of
Hell Itself and found to be indestructible.
Sometimes both. Stuart’s Mungo is
on a pilgrim’s path towards a queer identity.
To complete his journey, he must battle the devil and lose his
innocence. Whether he loses his soul in
the process, as so many do, will ultimately determine his fate.
In SHUGGIE BAIN, Stuart gave us a portrait of a mother and
son and the journey they would take together.
It was a story as much about Agnes Bain’s life, and what brought her so
low, as it was about Shuggie’s nascent sexuality and devotion to his flawed,
but very sympathetic, mother. It was a
novel about addiction and how it sabotages the happiness (and future prospects)
of everyone around the person struggling with it. Although that novel was bookended with a
slightly older Shuggie, it was essentially the story of a young gay boy’s
childhood with an alcoholic parent. That
it clicked with so many readers is due in no small part to the relationship
between mother and son and what unconditional love means – and what it doesn’t
mean, as well. It was about emerging
from childhood scarred, but alive. It
was the story of a child's determination to make it to the next step, beyond
childhood, into the unknown. We don’t
know what comes next for Shuggie. But
Stuart, rather than writing a sequel, provides us with the next part of the
conversation. A part two on the theme,
as adolescence fades into adult identity.
While many may recognize themselves in a young Shuggie Bain, and while
many Shuggies may exist in this harsh world, the path into young adulthood can
fork in many directions. Mungo is the
story of one of them.
With YOUNG MUNGO, Douglas Stuart focuses his lens squarely
on the boy. Yes, on the surface, there
are similarities with this novel and his last.
It is almost entirely superficial however, and any deeper reading of the
two books will find a divergent path taken by Mungo into the wilderness of Scotland, and his future. In terms of both
plot and character, MUNGO drives harder into the violence, the poverty, the
pain, and the love of a young gay person for another, in a world that won’t
love them back. This is a story very
much about Mungo. Rather than a co-lead,
his mother is one actor in the operatic highs and lows of Mungo's life. Mungo’s
mother will not elicit much sympathy here.
His older sister is the only person looking out for him, and even her
concern has its natural limitations. She
is, after all, not his mother.
By making Mungo a teenager on the verge of manhood, but not
sure what manhood is supposed to mean or be, Stuart is free to explore Mungo's
sexuality in all its beautiful awkwardness, uncertain shyness, longing hunger,
and shame. Stuart goes all-in and deftly
portrays the love of two young men in juxtaposition with the horror of
abuse. I see a confidence in Stuart's
writing that he can absolutely reach for whatever peaks or valleys he wants
now. Nothing is off limits, nor should
it be. With no reticence, the truly ugly
side of poverty and violence and bigotry sits, uncomfortably, but necessarily,
with the blooming affection of two young people discovering that their dismal
world can enjoy flashes of light sometimes too.
What I appreciate the most about Stuart’s writing is how
specific, yet totally universal, his observations are of the young gay man’s
mind. How one’s identity is so often tarred with slurs. Mungo rehashes them in his head. “Idiot. Weakling. Liar. Poofter.
Coward.” It takes a strong will to not
believe them and, therefore, not become them.
Isolated and afraid, the softhearted and loving individuals are easy
prey for almost anything on God’s earth that wishes to pounce on them. Mungo wonders how they know - what does he
do, what do they see - that seems to signal to everyone that he can be picked-off
from the crowd. It is only in making
that one special connection with one special like-minded boy, with the same
good heart, that Mungo is given a shot at being something different and better
than his environment would have him be.
Both SHUGGIE and MUNGO have given me a vivid impression of
the East End of Glasgow. I've been to Edinburgh
but haven't been to Glasgow yet.
(Although it is unlikely as a tourist I would see what is portrayed so
candidly in these novels.) Still, I can see it. Hear it. Feel it.
I understand Stuart's Glasgow and I know it; such is the power of his
words. But, perhaps more importantly for
me as a reader, I am left trembling with my own emotional recognition of
home. The poverty. The city streets. The alcoholic parent. The big-hearted devotion to those people
incapable of returning it in kind. I grew up in roughly the same period, 3,500
miles away, and yet… my mind reaches
across the Atlantic and knows, down to my core, what Stuart is conveying in
these pages. Some feelings,
particularly those involved in the young gay experience of the 20th Century,
are inherently and undeniably true, regardless of the language or accent of the
speaker.
It is that spark of recognition which make for truly great
reading experiences. It's why we read novels in the first place. It's those moments in fiction when you feel
like kindred spirits walk the Earth and that maybe, if you are lucky, you
encounter each other long enough to tell each other that yes, you are worthy,
and yes, we can flourish together.
And read more about the author Douglas Stuart.
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