He had caused a sensation with “Shuggie Bain”, his first novel that forty-four publishers had refused before its publication, in 2020, at Picador. Born in an industrial Glasgow decimated by the disastrous Thatcher years, Douglas Stuart spoke better than anyone of this city in crisis, of its unemployed and its drug addicts, of its poor in everything, of its destitute in love. Against all odds, the book won the Booker Prize, and sold a million copies worldwide. But did the worthy successor to Dickens still have some under the pedal? And wasn’t Douglas Stuart the writer of just one book? He proves the opposite with this second novel, as violent and splendid as the previous one.
“Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart: the pain of the unloved
Unemployment, class struggle and shoplifting
It’s Glasgow again, in unemployment, class struggle and shoplifting mode. In one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the police struggle to stop the gangs from waging an all-out war. The Protestant leader is called Hamish. He is violent, nervous, implacable. Already a father at the age of twenty, Hamish is the eldest of a drifting sibling. If Jodie, her younger sister, is on the way to becoming independent, the youngest, Mungo (he bears the name of the patron saint of the city), must manage at the age of fifteen as he can while their single mother Mo-Maw has left the family home and moved in with a pawnbroker. Pretty boy (but afflicted with a tic that disfigures him), gentle as a lamb, Mungo meets James, a young Catholic who lives far from the fury of the city, in a dovecote he has built with his own hands. . Their passion will be clandestine, or it will not be. Because Mo-Maw, who would like to put him back on the right heterosexual path, sends Mungo on a denial course with two ex-convicts who abuse their little victim during a fishing trip on the banks of Loch Lomond.
As the journey turns into a horror movie, Douglas Suart increases the pressure until the final confrontation between the Bhoystons and the Billies, between Catholics and Protestants. Breathtaking and sordid fresco, “Mungo” is a fascinating exploration of Glasgow and its suburbs, with their toxic beauty, their dirty nights and their unbreathable air. In the streets, in the book, the dialogues slam like bricks being thrown and the characters seem so alive that you would think they were carved out of real human flesh.
Goncourt – Booker Prize: who wins the literary prize match?Mungoby Douglas Stuart, translated from English (Scotland) by Charles Bonnot, Globe, 480 p., 24 euros.
