Young Mungo is a suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation. We readers know none of this will end well, but it's a testament to Stuart's unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can't possibly anticipate how very badly-and baroquely-things will turn out. Stuart, who grew up in this world.doesn't translate, but lets the life of the tenements make itself known though his precisely observed and often wry style. As he did so deftly in Shuggie Bain, Stuart takes us readers deep into the working class world of Glasgow-here, circa early 1990s-where jobs and trade unions have been gutted. What's different about Stuart's new novel is its form: The outer frame here is a suspense story a story not just of innocence lost, but slaughtered. Reading it is like peering into the apartment of yet another broken family whose Glasgow tenement might be down the road from Shuggie Bain's. Young Mungo, like its predecessor, is a nuanced and gorgeous heartbreaker of a novel.
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