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A review by scottish0reader
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I don't get to see a lot of representation of where I'm from and where I've lived my whole life. Being in Scotland, especially Glasgow, and ESPECIALLY the East End, we get almost no media coverage, so it's so heart-warming to see a book being written about us, and a book people have been reading all over the world. Reading a book in Scots (yes, how the dialogue is written is how we really talk, we're possibly even worse than what he wrote) was such a fun experience, though I feel sorry for people reading it that aren't Scottish.
While Glasgow has changed a lot over the decades, a lot of the aspects of the book still reflect what we live in, and certainly what I've heard and seen in my own experience living here. The hatred between Rangers and Celtic (which isn't just football rivalry, it's complete sectarianism (Rangers are traditionally Protestants and Celtic traditionally Catholics)) is still very much alive. Thankfully it has died down over the years, but people know to still be careful when the Old Firm (Rangers vs. Celtic) is on. You also know what pubs to avoid depending on what team you support, and what streets to avoid during a game (my mum is a police officer and hates whenever the Old Firm is on, because she knows it's going to be mayhem and there's going to be loads of fights). There's still a big division between the working and upper class, and council houses as described in the book are still very much a reality. For the first thirteen years of my life, I lived in the equivalent of a council house, and while the house was awful and the street wasn't the nicest, there's something special about growing up in that type of neighbourhood, I can't describe it.
I'm fortunate now to live in quite a decent estate, although I still live in the East End, and I'm still under the worst SIMD ranking. Despite this, Glasgow's violence has calmed down a lot. You still get murder stories pretty much every day on the news, I know people my age (seventeen) fighting each other with machetes, there's still gangs around, and there's still a lot of drugs. We have improved a lot though, we're no longer the murder capital of Europe (yey), we're actually one of the prime examples around the world for how to effectively tackle knife crime (the Violence Restriction Unit, which even London have tried to implement after seeing our success), and although gangs are still a thing, there nothing like they were in the 70's-90's.
The depictions of Glasgow in the book, though tough, were true. That was Glasgow's reality for many years, and parts of it still are. For example, my dad was born in the early 70's, and he's told me stories of when he was in a gang, and almost got done for murder because someone else in the gang stabbed a person in a different gang in the throat. He told me about how a gang broke into his and his bothers house, expecting them to be there, but when they weren't they said they'd come back later with more people and kill them, so my dad and his brother had to run for their lives. It's also true that everyone in Glasgow knows someone in Barlinnie (Glasgow's Prison), for example, my dad was in for two weeks for missing a court date, and my friend's dad is still currently in for murder.
Despite this all, I still love Glasgow with my entire heart. It's an amazing city with amazing sights, beautiful statues (look up the Duke of Wellington statue, that is a genuine statue we still have in the city centre, the police tried to take down the cone decades ago, but we kept putting it back on, and it's stayed there ever since), there's amazing murals, and so many fun activities to do in the city.
If you want a video that perfectly captures Glaswegian people, watch these two videos, trust me, it's hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kufqdyH4r2c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCqprbH7mrg
(say 'we'll set about you' to any Glaswegian and they'll immediately know what you're talking about, it's an iconic quote for us now).
Anyway, enough about me rattling on about my city, I suppose I better talk about the actual book.
James And Mungo have my heart, bless them. They were kind of gross together at times, but I guess that's how fifteen year old boys act. Jodie was nice too, becoming the mother role because their own mother couldn't, and I felt so bad for her about her teacher grooming her, though it was so satisfying reading about them trashing the caravan, but then it was heart-breaking reading her asking Mungo to punch the baby out of her. And then Hamish, even though he is meant to be a bit of a dick, I did kind of like him (except when he was being homophobic, of course). It was nice to see him being a caring and loving father to his daughter, rather than just getting up and leaving the mother with the kid.
The ending kind of confused me, not going to lie. I'm assuming that Hamish took the fall for Mungo, because even though he didn't like his brother being gay and being with James, he'd rather that than seeing Mungo go to Barlinnie. Maybe, even in a sense, Hamish was proud of him for murdering the men. Even though it looked like there was a lot of hatred between the pair, and maybe there was to some degree, they obviously did care for each other. Hamish was the typical Glaswegian boy, acting older than his age by joining a gang and fighting people so no one else would touch him, no one would think he was weak, while Mungo didn't care about any of that, and Hamish didn't want him to be targeted and killed. I think it's obvious that Hamish wouldn't be able to hold the act that he was Mungo for long, he might go under for lying to the police, but he wouldn't go for the murder, but claiming he was Mungo gave the real Mungo enough time to run away with James. So I'm just assuming Mungo and James are living happily together somewhere up in the North of Scotland, away from James' father and away from Mungo's past.
I love this book so much, and I recommend it to absolutely everyone, especially if you like reading about cities from a real, raw perspective. It was honestly the best experience in the world to read a book from my own city, a magic nothing else could compare to.