A Forbidden Love Grows in Douglas Stuart's Glasgow

Young Mungo tells the tale of a gentle boy with, Stuart writes, a sweetness that "unsettled other boys." Mungo is struggling to survive in working-class Glasgow. But he finds James, and the boys become friends and lovers while they navigate the sectarian tension of religion (Mungo is protestant, James is Catholic) and the hypermasculine environment of the economically depressed city. Mungo's brother Hamish is a gang leader, and his mother, Mo-Maw, disappears on drunken benders and sends him off with two brutal local men on a fishing trip "all for his own good," when all he wants is to find a place where he and James can be together.

The book is a literary wonder and a suspenseful page-turner. Stuart's language and observations are precise and visual. Describing one of the men taking Mungo out of the city, Stuart writes: "He wore indigo denims and his belt was laced under the logo so as not to obscure the proud Armani badge. He was handsome-or he must have been close to it once-but there was something already spoiled about him, like good butcher's meat that had been left out."