Do you know that feeling when one of your colleagues at work comes down with a stomach flu, and then one by one your coworkers drop like flies, and you know it's only a matter of time until it hits you too? The motion before you tonight is, “This house believes that slavery should be abolished from the face of the Earth”. And, indeed, the case is so self-evident I feel I hardly need to argue it.’

Mungo Makes New Friends | Mantra Lingua UK Mungo Makes New Friends | Mantra Lingua UK

I didn’t understand that the conflict between Protestants and Catholics raged in Scotland as Ireland. It’s the 1990s and fifteen year old Mungo lives in a Glasgow housing estate. He’s a soft soul in a hard world. His older brother is the leader of a gang and is trying to toughen Mungo up. His mother is a drunk and more absent than present. His sister tries to run the household while living her own life. Mungo meets James, a Catholic, and they fall in love. The only thing worse in this milieu than a cross sect romance is a queer romance. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was her Scottish secretary from 1986-1990, famously said in one interview about the Scottish view of Thatcher: "She was a woman, she was an English woman and she was a bossy English woman and they could probably put up with one of these but three simultaneously was a bit too much."

Shipping Terms

My thanks to RB Media and NetGalley for the ALC of “Young Mungo”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. I’m very sorry this worked out so badly. The new book by the author of Shuggie Bain! As gritty and heartbreaking, but also gorgeously showing the sweet love between two Glaswegian boys. It is harsh, ugly, and frightening, and it comes from events so hideous that I was sure I would lose my rag and start screaming incoherently at the Kindle. And it was, in this reader's angry, bitter judgment, the only and the best way he could have behaved. It was a boy, cooked in a bath of rage, becoming the only man that bath dissolved the fatty, weakening childness off of him to be. There were cheers and approving applause. Up on the ladies’ balcony, more than one corset strained with admiration of Fairchild’s manly virtue.

Young Mungo — Douglas Stuart

The extraordinary, powerful second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain, Young Mungo is both a vivid portrayal of working-class life in 80s Glasgow, and the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men. This is going to be the very first ARC I am rating as a 1 star and I hate doing this. But giving it two stars will not represent my experience accurately. It was just a waste of my time and a terribly frustrating read. The only reason I didn’t DNF it was that it was an audiobook. this is undoubtably a very raw story, one that is equal parts captivating and horrific, but i think it will take a certain kind of reader to see that kind of brutal honestly and value it. And the next minute we are on a dangerous fishing trip where Mungo meets James, a Catholic, a little older, a pigeon fancier. She had asked for violence out of a gentle soul and it made her feel like she had trampled a patch of fresh snow."Jodie felt the floor tilt underneath her. Like a gable end slated for demolition, the front facade of her fell away and the private contents of her life rolled out. She was being torn down, and every mismatched bed sheet in her mind was to be exposed for all to see." James’s father is a macho oil-rigger who makes good money and is out at sea for weeks at a time, so the boys are left on their own with plenty of food. For Mungo, it’s a far cry from the empty cupboards and threats from Hamish at home.