Hello and welcome to our Read With Us discussion of Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. The format is the same one we have used before. Carole, Kym, and I have each posted a question or two on our blogs today, and we will have an in-person Zoom discussion at 7:00 pm Eastern this evening. You can send me an email (email address is in the upper right) to RSVP and I will make sure you get an invitation with the Zoom link if you haven't already.
Please feel free to answer the questions and add your opinions in the comments, no matter whether you have read the book or not (or even if you tried and didn't finish). I'll be replying to your posts within the comment section for this discussion - and you can comment on other people's comments, as well. If you are unable to attend the Zoom discussion tonight, we'd love to hear your thoughts, but you needn't feel obligated to comment here if you'll be attending the Zoom discussion. Your thoughts, comments, and opinions are valuable and we'd like to hear them here or in person tonight. I just don't want you to feel like you need to discuss the book twice (unless you want to)!
My question has to do with the ideas of family and forgiveness in Young Mungo. Mungo Hamilton is a sensitive, anxious, fifteen-year-old gay young man in a family made up of his single, alcoholic mother Maureen (Mo-Maw or Tattie-Bogle if she's drunk), brother Hamish (Ha-Ha), and sister Jodie. They live together sometimes, when Mo-Maw happens to come home, or when Hamish isn't with the fifteen-year-old girl that he has had a child with. Even though they could be considered a family unit, they are each alone in their own world, with problems, dreams, and hopes that the others are completely unaware of. I was struck by their situation when I read this quote: "Mrs. Campbell started back down the stairs. Jodie reached out to her, but the woman shrugged her off. When she was back on her landing, she turned and looked up at the Hamilton siblings. "Ah've known you since you were in nappies, and ah've known that selfish mother of yours even longer. If anybody should understand making excuses for the person they love, it's you two. Can ye no forgive me that?"
Mrs. Campbell had just been violently beaten by her husband, was making excuses for her husband's behavior, and pointed out to Jodie and Mungo that they should understand that behavior since they did the same thing day after day. I started to wonder if the Hamiltons really were a family or just a group of people that had been thrown together by genetics. Can you call yourself a family if the people in that group rarely consider each other, know or accept each other for who they really are? I think Mungo certainly forgave his mother's behavior, and also Hamish's. Is forgiveness a necessary part of family dynamics, even if you aren't living in a dysfunctional family? Do you think Mungo and James come together in their own family?
I have an admission to make. I started to read an advance copy of Young Mungo way back in January of this year, got to a certain grim section (you can probably guess where it was if you read the book), and could not read any further, for almost six months. It was all just Too Much - too much violence, homophobia, poverty, alcoholism, sadness, dire despair, and lack of hope. I was afraid I might have to try and bluff my way through the discussion, but I respect you all too much to do that. I sat down last Sunday and finished the book. It was still Too Much, but I have hopes that your discussion in the comments and tonight will help clarify this book for me. It is Too Much, but because of that, it's also a powerful book. I can't wait to hear what you think!
I'll be joining tonight! And, as you already know, I did not like the book at all...TOO MUCH is a good description.
ReplyDeleteI know you didn't like the book at all, Vera, but I thank you so much for joining the discussion last night. It's always nice to have differing viewpoints when you are discussing a book, and I certainly understand why you wanted more from Douglas Stuart than beautiful writing. Hopefully, the next book will be more your cup of tea!
DeleteI can't wait for tonight's discussion! I think that Mrs. Campbell hit the nail on the head! Such truth in how she lived...how she believed that was how life should be...and that was all she expected. And finding that same way of living in other households reinforced her beliefs. And yet... along the way Mungo discovers another side of life... a Tattie Boger free life. Yes, there were hard bits... but I loved this book so much more than Shuggie Bain... for me, there was more hope, more determination, more realization that the only person you can count on to save you is... you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment and joining the discussion last night, Kat. I really appreciated your point that as horrible as Mungo's family was, they were providing him with the tools and attributes that he needed to carry on in his life. I don't wish this upon anyone, but I also saw some glimmers of hope that Mungo had discovered another side of life through saving himself and James.
DeleteI have a feeling I know exactly what part you got to, because I think it's likely the same spot I got to and had to take a break.
ReplyDeleteI think that Mungo's family is not unique and that there are many families where people are related by blood but wouldn't necessarily choose to be a family. It was clear to me that Maureen probably wouldn't have chosen to have children if she could have, and I don't think she has any real affection for her kids. Of the four of them, I think Mungo and Jodie have the best relationship and are the only ones who genuinely care for each other, and perhaps if the two of them could have lived elsewhere, things would have been better for them. I'm looking forward to digging more into the discussion tonight.
Thank you for your comment and joining the discussion last night, Sarah. I couldn't help but think of the Tolstoy quote, "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The Hamiltons certainly had a multitude of ways of being unhappy, and so much of it stemmed from Maureen. I've been imagining my own sort of sequel as to what happens to Mungo, James, and Jodie, as they were the characters that genuinely cared for each other.
DeleteI can’t be at the discussion but one thing that felt like clarification to me was the amount of violence and lack of tenderness in the story. Even with James and Mungo, the tender moments shift to physical. Stuart said that was life in his experience. Men/boys were expected to be masculine and the physical behavior was the only way they knew how to interact. In my own family, my grandparents were from Glasgow although my dad grew up in the states, my brothers had this same expectation heaped on them and they were very physical with one another. I pulled on a lot of those memories in trying to understand the family dynamics and connections. Your question about forgiveness is so interesting. I wonder if the dysfunction made forgiveness impossible and maybe even unnecessary in the eyes of the characters?
ReplyDeleteThank you for these interesting points, Juliann. I'm lucky enough to have not been raised in a family like this, so the violence and lack of tenderness were something I had to try to understand. It became a little clearer when James and Mingo spent those three days together and Stuart writes that even the tenderness shifted to physical rough-housing as you said. I think you may be right that forgiveness was a fairly foreign concept to most of the characters and probably not necessary to get on with their lives.
DeleteI'm conflicted. I liked Shuggie more than this book. I just didn't like the brother at all and sending Mungo off camping with some ex convicts just was an awful decision. I agree with Sarah, Mungo and Jodie seemed to have the most real relationship to me and really seemed to care about each other.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Shuggie Bain, but even though Mungo was much harder to read, I think I personally reaped a bigger reward from it. We were all astounded at the thought of Maureen sending Mungo off with St. Christopher and Gallowgate when she didn't know them at all. It seemed that she was just happy to have some time to herself without any children underfoot. Thank you for your thoughts!
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