A review by John Cook.
It must be quite a burden to produce another novel after winning the Booker as Stewart did with ‘Shuggie’ and there has been discussion around whether ‘Mungo’ is better or not and whether he should have found something different to say. He says that ‘Mungo’ was well on the way anyway when ‘Shuggie’ was published so I disregard that line of thought. If anything the two almost bookend one another in time, place, and characterisation. I truly think this one is better than ‘Shuggie’ with the last half and the conclusion deeply and genuinely moving and provocative for me.
The tenement locale, social and political environment is pretty similar though this time the reader is not taken much away from typical Glasgow estate dwelling except for the interwoven expedition to a remote loch (Lamond? In Lochaber which has my family origins).
“I came swannin’ down the dockside in my best school uniform while a tide of men were pushing the other way. They had just been telt they were getting the sack. Their lunch pails were still full.” Hamish stopped his long strides and looked out over the low city. “Grown men wi’ greetin’ faces, and here’s muggins, in a school tie, asking for an apprenticeship. Three hunner and fifty men on the broo and I’m asking for a bus-fare allowance. It was a pure embarrassment.” “I’m sorry.””
This time we have an almost complete young (15-year-old) love story between a ‘Proddy’ and a ‘Fienian’ both with coming out problems in a largely hostile environment. That is not to say that there are people both within and without family environments that want to help and support in ways that they can. However, that seething layer of fear and hostility toward homosexuality is present and drives the boys in different ways. Mungo’s rather horribly well-intentioned elder brother (Hamish) drives him toward conventional hooliganism, theft, and religious-based warfare (if scarcely understood) with to-be-expected consequences. His sometimes-present mother (Mo-Maw) does try when she is present and even sparks the parallel story of a man-making expedition gone very wrong to a rural loch on a ‘boot camp’ experience with two of the most inappropriate individuals one could find at an AA meeting. This reminds me to always consider in these stories that everyone has a background. They may be very flawed from their environment just like Shuggie and Mungo and unable to escape the patterns they have entered into with few, like sister Jodie, can find a way out. The love of mother is omnipresent and almost unviable.
“They kept their chests puffed out until they could be safe in their mammies’ arms again; where they could coorie into her side as she watched television and she would ask, ‘What is all this, eh, what’s with all these cuddles?’ and they would say nothing, desperate to just be boys again, wrapped up safe in her softness.”
“She hadn’t needed to ask if it was about Mo-Maw. Everything about this boy was about his mother. He lived for her in a way that she had never lived for him. It was as though Mo-Maw was a puppeteer, and she had the tangled, knotted strings of him in her hands. She animated every gesture he made: the timid smile, the thrumming nerves, the anxious biting, the worry, the pleasing, the way he made himself smaller in any room he was in, the watchful way he stood on the edge before committing, and the kindness, the big, big love.”
This is not an environment in which to be a suspect loner..
“Poor-Wee-Chickie lived on the ground floor left. It was a door the children all rushed past. A plain brown door like Mungo’s own, that had a sad, degraded look from all the times it had been scrubbed clean of foul graffiti. Someone – a Proddy pal of Ha-Ha’s – had found a half-dead can of spray paint in one of the middens. The wit had spray-painted Child Mahlestur in tall letters on Poor-Wee-Chickie’s door.”
And of Chickie’s own tale ..
“I just didnae have the guts.”
There were warnings for Mungo ..
“I can see exactly what you want and it’s not guid. If yer no careful, you’ll be stuck here with her, with Mo-Maw, for all your days. A wee bachelor living on the third floor with his poor mammy and shuffling about in a cagoule to buy his messages. Suffering Jesus. The best part of your day will be standing outside the butcher’s and talking to the other old wummin about the weather. Then you’ll carry your fish supper home in a string bag and lock every snib behind yourself. And for whut?” “For her.” “Then ye’re as daft as ye look.””
“Jodie wished her brother would cry. It was a luxury she never had. It had been different for her, she had no one to cry to–neither Mo-Maw nor Hamish could have offered any comfort. But Mungo had her. As they crouched behind the communal bin shed she wished that he would cry. She only had to think of Hamish and she could see the rage that built when you never let the hurt out. She knew too many knotted-up men. “You know she’s a liar, don’t you?””
I found the ‘lost’ weekend fascinating in its detail and utterly shocking in what it did to transform Mungo – just not in the way intended. It was a little sad that it was mostly drawn in rather appropriately drab and gloomy colours. I found its conclusion a little weak though perhaps very valuable to balance what had just occurred. The two ‘escorts’ in manhood for Mungo had very interesting names which I would like to comment on in my conclusion. There is some reflection on what an environment he had not experienced before.
“Mungo tilted his head back. He hadn’t noticed, but the sky wasn’t absolutely black after all. There were stars in every corner you could see. Even when he thought he found an empty patch of nothingness his eyes adjusted and the sky filled with frosted stars and then what looked like the cream left by stars. He had never seen the night sky like this before. He had never seen it so cloudless, without the soft orange filter from the lights of the scheme.”
The boy James Jamieson with whom Mungo pairs comes from a background that is not financially broken but he has lost his mother and his father is a classic FIFO worker on the North sea rigs. James could have a relatively easy life and career path ahead of him but knows what he is sexually and is equally tormented and fearful. In his loneliness, he takes to the grand old tradition of keeping pigeons for breeding purposes (and good money) with some learned scams along the way. He builds a refuge dovecot for his birds and himself which Mungo finds and learns to assist. The boys are building an activity that creates a friendship that leads to tentative loving. There is sex that is well presented. I can only assume that in the time presented (’80-90s) there would be less pornographic pressure to perform to some external expectation and it is as sweet as it is real.
“Mungo raised himself on his elbows and kissed James. Even more than the others, it felt like his first proper kiss, clumsy and with too much pressure on his lips. He buried the tip of his nose in James’s cheek and gasped when he felt the secret warmth of James’s tongue. It thrilled him. The tongue tasted sweet like cream and powdered vanilla, and his mouth was hot like burning peat and golden tobacco.”
I cannot know what the author intended but I found the building, roofing, and what the ‘doocot’ represented to be highly symbolic of what was happening to the two youths and their need to break away and create something of their own. What happened on Mungo’s last visit there truly brought me to tears.
I was left with a series of questions such as the names of Mungo’s ‘leaders into manhood’ -Gallowgate, St Christopher, Mungo, and James. There is a statue of St Mungo as the patron saint of Glasgow with his arm raised as in the final moments of the book. There is a Gallowgate road and barracks etched into Glasgow’s history. There is the gesture of killing the pigeon. Was the time by the loch a kind of passion or temptation? Gallowgate was a man who thought a 10-year-old child could want a relationship. There is the relationship between the two men and what they assumed of Mungo. There is a long historic battle at play here with, for me, a kind of final gesture that occurs within a place made sacred for the boys and their hopes that is almost left unsaid at the conclusion.
This would not be the first time I have over-egged a book I like but I can sincerely recommend it even with its occasional flaws.
BCC Library has audiobook, ebook, MP3 and 52 copies.
queerreaders 