When I first heard about Young Mungo, I thought it was going to be Shuggie Bain Version 2.0. Both novels are set in working-class neighbourhoods in Scotland in the late 20th century and both novels are about a queer boy with an alcoholic mother. However, while Shuggie Bain is by no means full of sunshine and rainbows, Young Mungo is a much darker, violent novel.

When Young Mungo opens, Mungo Hamilton has been sent away for the weekend by his mother, Maureen, to go on a fishing trip with two men who are complete strangers, in order to “make a man out of him.” As his fishing weekend unfolds throughout the novel, a feeling of uneasiness permeates the story. If you think something truly terrible is going to happen to Mungo while he is on his fishing trip, you would be right.

The reason why Mungo is sent away, as the novel goes back in time to tell, is because he becomes friends with, and falls in love with, another boy who lives in his tenement, James, who is a Catholic. This is a problem because of the homophobia of the poor, working class that Mungo belongs too. It is also a problem because Catholics are supposed to be the sworn enemy of Protestants like Mungo, according to Mungo’s older brother Hamish, who imposes his toxic masculinity on his “soft” younger brother. Hamish is a thug and the leader of the local Protestant gang that is in a continuous vicious battle with the local Catholic gang. Believe me, this is no War of the Buttons.

Shuggie Bain’s mother, Agnes, is no saint, but Maureen really takes the cake. I could not empathize with her at all. A 34-year-old woman with three teenage children, she is uneducated and poor, and constantly on the look-out for a man who will take care of her. She selfishly abandons her children every time she finds a new boyfriend, and then goes crawling back to them when the relationship sours. This has led to resentful feelings towards Maureen from Mungo’s older sister, Jodie, who pretty much raises Mungo herself. Mungo is a mama’s boy, though, and even though he can recognize that Maureen is not a good mother, he cannot help but love her and want to protect her, even after all the times she gets drunk and mean or abandons him for a new boyfriend. And she repays his love by sending him away with two strangers who will rob him of what he has left of his childhood innocence.

Douglas Stuart is an immensely gifted writer who can find moments of beauty in the bleakness of the working-class life in Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s. To read a Douglas Stuart novel is to be completely immersed in the life of the working poor. It is not where I would ever want to find myself, but I think it is important to experience life from other perspectives. I had to step away from Young Mungo for a couple of days in the middle of reading it because it is a difficult novel to absorb, but I felt compelled to finish it and I am glad I did. Like Shuggie Bain, the novel gives you hope that Mungo will be okay and that he will find a way to live as his authentic self.