Top-notch déjà vu

After the triumph that was Shuggie Bain, I was super keen to read Stuart’s next novel, and was thrilled not to have to wait long – just 2 years – for Young Mungo to be released. But diving into it was strangely disconcerting; the writing style was distinctively Stuart’s, the quality of the writing was also top notch once again, but it was as if I was rereading another version of Shuggie Bain. The déjà vu feeling was not due to being back on the streets of Glasgow; it is perhaps because once again we have a young, endearing, vulnerable, working class, male protagonist with an unreliable and alcoholic mother who alternates between coddling him and neglecting him, and once again we are feeling the grit and grime of his struggles to grow up and navigate his abrasive world – Mungo Hamilton is so like Shuggie Bain. 

Mungo’s siblings are interesting – Hamish, who is the tough gang leader around town, and Jodie, who is beautiful, tough, clever, resilient, with a heart of gold – they are nearly caricatures, but still charming. Mo Maw their mother is clearly feckless, prioritising her own gratifications over being a responsible parent, and resented by her eldest two, but continually forgiven by Mungo, her youngest. The family tells the story of inner-city poverty and the desperation it brings, the trap of generational poverty, and the lack of prospects which leads to lads turning to violence and crime, and lasses selling themselves cheaply for momentary escape from harsh reality. Jodie lets an older, married man use her sexually as her way of getting out of her own life from time to time: “Three hours of peace in exchange for four sweaty, dirty minutes” (p95), while Hamish has already got a 15 year old girl pregnant, and then the mother of his baby. They are not only trapped but continue to trap others in the same vicious cycle, as Stuart depicts so well. 

Naturally, we hope our young protagonist will fare better. The level of his deprivation is stark: “Fifteen years he had lived and breathed in Scotland, and he had never seen a glen, a lock, a forest, or a ruined castle. Actually, he had seen them, but only ever on biscuit tins and or the side of tourist buses” (p155). In this novel, he is sent away by his mother to spend a weekend learning to fish with two desperados, two down and out alcoholics who take him to a remote loch, and of course one of them ends up abusing him. It is a mystery for most of the novel why he has been sent away with these two men. 

One of my favourite characters in this novel is Poor-wee-Chickie, a bachelor who lives on the ground floor of the block where Mungo’s family live, and is often made the target for abuse. He is not nearly as helpless as might be assumed, as we later see him standing up to the massive Mr Campbell who lives between him, and whom he stands up to when he hears Mr Campbell beating his wife. However, the locals lads who do not see him for the dignified, intelligent man that he is, make him run the gauntlet of his taunts whenever he walks past, “It was all they wanted, to bait him into responding, to insult him so profoundly he would let his guard drop. Then they could feign injury, batter him, and remind him of his low place, sub-human, sub-them. This one old man made them feel better. When everyone looked at them like they were nothing, like they had nothing, he still had less” (p140-1). This passage about dangerous young men who have no future and have nothing to do and nothing to lose, powerfully resonates with one from Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, where young black American men also terrorise their streets: 

Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn’t be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon–and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner’s chamber. So Lorrain found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence – human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide.

p169-70 The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor.

It seems that in any inner-city, whether in Scotland or anywhere else, young men with no prospects and trapped in their environment, are set to detonate at a hair-trigger, channelling energies into destruction since there is little else they can do. For sure, in this novel, the Protestant and Catholic street gang battles seem more for the sake of something exciting to do, than any actual given reason for the fighting.  

As always, it is the Glaswegian accent and slang that makes this writing so much of its place and period, so distinctive. So much so that sometimes upon first reading, this reader at least is quite baffled, but usually the context explains everything very well eventually. For example, early on in the book, there was this sentence, “For the past two weeks, Mungo had watched his sister skitter inside the close mouth and sneak up the stairs before any of the neighbour could open their door and shame her for the stour” (p34), which slightly baffled me as I wasn’t quite sure what the ‘close mouth’ or’ stour’ referred to; apparently stour means dust, and a close is a private property, or an alleyway, or an entry. A ‘doo’ turns out to be a dove, ‘lit’ for like, and ‘telt’ for told, ‘how so’ means why, to ‘chib’ apparently means to cut, ‘gallus’ for bold, etc. There are some turns of phrases which are crude and charming and distinctive sprinkled throughout, like “My wee arsehole was twitching like a rabbit’s nose” (p339) to indicate feeling very tempted.  

The first half of the novel is carried by the strong writing style, but seems to go nowhere in particular. It oscillates between Mungo going on a ill-starred fishing trip in extremely remote Scotland with two ex-convicts at the behest of his mother (reason not yet revealed to the reader at this point), and the setting up the scene of the Hamiltons’ life in a housing estate in Glasgow. In the second half of the novel, however, the plot finally develops so that there is purpose, direction, and suspense, with the focus on the taboo of homosexuality in Glasgow, and Mungo falling in love with not just another lad, but a Catholic lad; which is not just a complication but a very real danger. This second novel by Douglas is darker than his first; somewhat edgier and more menacing. Once again, it is extremely well written, deeply riveting, and an excellent reading experience, and although I may have begun the novel feeling it was a rewrite of Shuggie Bain, despite its similarities, it is a significantly different story after all, and no lesser an accomplishment. I hope I will not need to wait longer than another 2 years for Stuart’s third!  

After the triumph that was Shuggie Bain, I was super keen to read Stuart’s next novel, and was thrilled not to have to wait long – just 2 years – for Young Mungo to be released. But diving into it was strangely disconcerting; the writing style was distinctively Stuart’s, the quality of the writing was also top notch once again, but it was as if I was rereading another version of Shuggie Bain. The déjà vu feeling was not due to being back on the streets of Glasgow; it is perhaps because once again we have a young, endearing, vulnerable, working class, male protagonist with an unreliable and alcoholic mother who alternates between coddling him and neglecting him, and once again we are feeling the grit and grime of his struggles to grow up and navigate his abrasive world – Mungo Hamilton is so like Shuggie Bain. 

Mungo’s siblings are interesting – Hamish, who is the tough gang leader around town, and Jodie, who is beautiful, tough, clever, resilient, with a heart of gold – they are nearly caricatures, but still charming. Mo Maw their mother is clearly feckless, prioritising her own gratifications over being a responsible parent, and resented by her eldest two, but continually forgiven by Mungo, her youngest. The family tells the story of inner-city poverty and the desperation it brings, the trap of generational poverty, and the lack of prospects which leads to lads turning to violence and crime, and lasses selling themselves cheaply for momentary escape from harsh reality. Jodie lets an older, married man use her sexually as her way of getting out of her own life from time to time:

“Three hours of peace in exchange for four sweaty, dirty minutes”

p95

while Hamish has already got a 15 year old girl pregnant, and then the mother of his baby. They are not only trapped but continue to trap others in the same vicious cycle, as Stuart depicts so well. 

Naturally, we hope our young protagonist will fare better. The level of his deprivation is stark:

Fifteen years he had lived and breathed in Scotland, and he had never seen a glen, a lock, a forest, or a ruined castle. Actually, he had seen them, but only ever on biscuit tins and or the side of tourist buses

p155

In this novel, he is sent away by his mother to spend a weekend learning to fish with two desperados, two down and out alcoholics who take him to a remote loch, and of course one of them ends up abusing him. It is a mystery for most of the novel why he has been sent away with these two men. 

One of my favourite characters in this novel is Poor-wee-Chickie, a bachelor who lives on the ground floor of the block where Mungo’s family live, and is often made the target for abuse. He is not nearly as helpless as might be assumed, as we later see him standing up to the massive Mr Campbell who lives between him, and whom he stands up to when he hears Mr Campbell beating his wife. However, the locals lads who do not see him for the dignified, intelligent man that he is, make him run the gauntlet of his taunts whenever he walks past,

It was all they wanted, to bait him into responding, to insult him so profoundly he would let his guard drop. Then they could feign injury, batter him, and remind him of his low place, sub-human, sub-them. This one old man made them feel better. When everyone looked at them like they were nothing, like they had nothing, he still had less.

p140-1

This passage about dangerous young men who have no future and have nothing to do and nothing to lose, powerfully resonates with one from Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, where young black American men also terrorise their streets: 

Bound by the last building on Brewster and a brick wall, they reigned in that unlit alley like dwarfed warrior kings. Born with the appendages of power, circumcised by the guillotine, and baptized with the steam from a million non reflective mirrors, these young men wouldn’t be called upon to thrust a bayonet into an Asian farmer, target a torpedo, scatter their iron seed from a B-52 into the wound of the earth, point a finger to move a nation, or stick a pole into the moon–and they knew it. They only had that three-hundred-foot alley to serve them as stateroom, armored tank, and executioner’s chamber. So Lorrain found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence – human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide” (p169-70). It seems that in any inner-city, whether in Scotland or anywhere else, young men with no prospects and trapped in their environment, are set to detonate at a hair-trigger, channelling energies into destruction since there is little else they can do. For sure, in this novel, the Protestant and Catholic street gang battles seem more for the sake of something exciting to do, than any actual given reason for the fighting.  

The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor

As always, it is the Glaswegian accent and slang that makes this writing so much of its place and period, so distinctive. So much so that sometimes upon first reading, this reader at least is quite baffled, but usually the context explains everything very well eventually. For example, early on in the book, there was this sentence, “For the past two weeks, Mungo had watched his sister skitter inside the close mouth and sneak up the stairs before any of the neighbour could open their door and shame her for the stour” (p34), which slightly baffled me as I wasn’t quite sure what the ‘close mouth’ or’ stour’ referred to; apparently stour means dust, and a close is a private property, or an alleyway, or an entry. A ‘doo’ turns out to be a dove, ‘lit’ for like, and ‘telt’ for told, ‘how so’ means why, to ‘chib’ apparently means to cut, ‘gallus’ for bold, etc. There are some turns of phrases which are crude and charming and distinctive sprinkled throughout, like “My wee arsehole was twitching like a rabbit’s nose” (p339) to indicate feeling very tempted.  

The first half of the novel is carried by the strong writing style, but seems to go nowhere in particular. It oscillates between Mungo going on a ill-starred fishing trip in extremely remote Scotland with two ex-convicts at the behest of his mother (reason not yet revealed to the reader at this point), and the setting up the scene of the Hamiltons’ life in a housing estate in Glasgow. In the second half of the novel, however, the plot finally develops so that there is purpose, direction, and suspense, with the focus on the taboo of homosexuality in Glasgow, and Mungo falling in love with not just another lad, but a Catholic lad; which is not just a complication but a very real danger.

This second novel by Douglas is darker than his first; somewhat edgier and more menacing. Once again, it is extremely well written, deeply riveting, and an excellent reading experience, and although I may have begun the novel feeling it was a rewrite of Shuggie Bain, despite its similarities, it is a significantly different story afterall, and no lesser an accomplishment. I hope I will not need to wait longer than another two years for Stuart’s third.