Mungo's father is long gone, and Mungo's sister, Jodie, looks after their household as best she can. Mungo is 15, the youngest of three Protestant siblings growing up in one of the city's poverty-stricken 'schemes.' The children's alcoholic mother leaves them periodically for a married man with children of his own. The astonishing sophomore effort from Booker Prize winner Stuart (Shuggie Bain) details a teen's hard life in north Glasgow in the post-Thatcher years. Keep some tissues handy-this coming-of-age romance is destined to become an iconic work of 21st-century literature. In one scene where Mungo is sent away to “man up” on a fishing trip, Stuart captures his emotions in particularly exquisite detail, with every gesture and vocal tic telling us something about his character. Author Douglas Stuart (whose Shuggie Bain won the Man Booker Prize in 2020) paints a formidable portrait of working-class life in Thatcher-era Scotland, with crisp writing that captures every detail of Mungo’s hardscrabble existence. But after he meets kindred spirit James, a Catholic boy who loves raising pigeons, an unlikely relationship blossoms between them in spite of their religious differences (not to mention society’s prejudices).

Raised in a Protestant family with a gang leader brother and an absent, alcoholic mother, the soft and sensitive 15-year-old Mungo is a total misfit. Set in the macho world of 1980s Glasgow, Young Mungo is a tear-jerking tale of queer love blooming in the most unexpected of places.

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