This is not the sort of woman who, when she vanishes, is presumed to be on an “Eat, Pray, Love”-style voyage of self-discovery. His mother, Maureen, also known as Mo-Maw, is a boozy wreck given to frequent disappearances. Mungo is 15 years old and the youngest of three children.

And they offer a world of exquisite detail: If a perfume creator wished to bottle the olfactory landscape of post-Thatcher-era Glasgow, all the necessary ingredients could be found in Stuart’s descriptions of sausage grease, fruity fortified wine, pigeon droppings and store-bought hair bleach. The novels share a brutality and a squirmy, claustrophobic evocation of family life.

As with that novel, this one tells the story of a boy and his alcoholic mother in working-class Glasgow. “Young Mungo” is a cousin to Stuart’s debut, “Shuggie Bain,” which was awarded the Booker Prize in 2020 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Family-friendly adjectives do not always describe the yanking of certain heart strings in this lovely but occasionally overworked novel. If the book in question were “Young Mungo,” by Douglas Stuart, it might begin with observations like “Gorgeous writing!” and “Wow,” before graduating to expletives and exclamation marks and wobbly underlines and question marks. It would be boring to read but accurate, like an EKG printout. $27.Ī critic could generate a whole book review simply by reproducing her marginalia.

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