Young Mungo
Young Mungo is a 2022 novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published by Grove Press on 5 April 2022 and by Picador on 14 April 2022. It is his second novel, following his Booker Prize-winning debut "Shuggie Bain" (2020). Premise. 15-year-old Mungo lives with his Protestant family in Glasgow. He meets James, a Catholic boy with whom a relationship blossoms. Critical reception. "Kirkus Reviews", in a starred review, wrote that "again this author creates characters so vivid, dilemmas so heart-rending, and dialogue so brilliant that the whole thing sucks you in like a  vacuum cleaner." Johanna Thomas-Corr, in her review for "The Sunday Times", called it a "rich and affecting group portrait of loneliness", but also "richly abundant" with "colourful characters" and Dickensian with its "moral vision that's expansive and serious while being savagely funny." Thomas-Corr, however, criticized the novel's narrative structure and Stuart for "rearranging the core elements of "Shuggie Bain" (alcoholism, rape, neglect, homophobia, domestic abuse) with the same family dynamics too."