Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
Fiction
Read this if you like: Masterful writing about broken families, a gutted community, toxic masculinity, innocence lost, and the redemptive power of love.
What it’s about: First love between two 1990s Glasgow boys—one Protestant, the other Catholic—what could go wrong? Mungo and James should be sworn enemies. Mungo’s older brother is the brutal leader of a Protestant gang, his mother is a drunk, and his older sister fills in for his mother as best as she can. Mungo is isolated and lonely, unable to fit in anywhere. James’s mother is dead and his father away working on an oil rig. They meet when Mungo wanders into Catholic territory and stumbles across James’s dovecote, where he raises pigeons. Their friendship grows into intimacy—they have much to share. But when his family finds out about James, Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip into the Scottish wilds with two men she knows from her AA meetings “to make a man of him.” Again, what could go wrong? Suspenseful, gut-wrenching, horrifying, tender and bittersweet, and ultimately hopeful.
You might also like: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow.
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