Three New Novels from the UK and Ireland
Montana Patrick
Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart Grove, 2022.
Set in working-class Glasgow in the early nineties, Douglas Stuart’s second novel—the follow-up to his 2020 Booker Prizewinning Shuggie Bain—is centered on Mungo, a Protestant boy who befriends and falls in love with James, his Catholic neighbor. Amidst the backdrop of Thatcherism, a highly dysfunctional family dynamic, and a society that condemns even the slightest sign of softness in young men is a dark, often tragic and unyielding coming-of-age story.
Young Mungo is a masterclass in characterization. I was taken aback by how vividly drawn Mungo, his family, and the other tenants of his council estate are. I saw them, heard them, and knew them in ways that only few writers, for me, have managed to evoke with such clarity and depth on the page.
There’s Mungo’s mother, nicknamed Mo-Maw, an alcoholic given to frequent, long disappearances, and a history of bringing toxic men into the lives of Mungo and his two siblings. Some of the most heart-wrenching moments of the novel are seen in the glimmers of Mungo’s balancing act of devotion to and disappointment in her.
Hamish is Mungo’s aggressive, frightening older brother, a local gang leader who frequently pressures Mungo into joining
in on his violent antics and torments him for “becoming too soft and weak.” Jodie is their sister, the middle child who has taken on most of the domestic and caretaking responsibilities for their household during Mo-Maw’s frequent disappearances.
When James becomes the one stable figure in Mungo’s life—the object of his affection that is at last reciprocated—his family begin to take notice, leaving the chance of their future up in the air.
What touches me so much about Stuart’s characters is the compassion that has clearly gone into his crafting of them. Many of these characters are truly despicable people, but they are written in such a nuanced way I couldn’t help but stand back and consider the ways they have been failed, themselves—by society, by family—without forgiving the awful things that they do.
One of the strongest aspects of Young Mungo is the incorporation of a dual timeline. Stuart alternates between the not entirely ideal, but still content moments of Mungo’s home life to a camping trip several months later, which goes tragically wrong. Weaving in and out of these two narratives gives the novel the suspenseful and page-turning quality of a thriller.
Setting and place play a breathtaking role in this novel. The amount of detail that Stuart incorporates into his description of Mungo’s council estate, as well as the Scottish countryside, is Dickensian. “A sharp wind blew across the loch,” Stuart writes, “the air was cleaner than he had ever tasted [. . .] it tasted green like spring grass, but there was a prehistoric brownness to it, as though it had searched an entire age through damp peaty glens and ancient forests, looking for wherever it was going.”
The often rough, working-class Glasgow of the story itself feels as though it is a character in its own right, central to the heart and soul of the stories taking place within, as well as the deep course of trauma and tragedy that pulses through the backstories of some of its inhabitants.
Weather, too, plays a particularly Scottish role in staging the story. “The sky was dimly lit with a dull blue gloam,” Stuart writes, setting one of the novel’s more ominous scenes.
Despite this book’s truly heavy subject matter (I feel I’ll be carrying it around with me for some time) I have to pause to marvel at its structure and Stuart’s craft. This novel is a real work of passion, with many of the makings of a modern classic.
Companion piece, by Ali Smith Pantheon Books, 2022.
“A story is never an answer. A story is always a question.”
In a provocative fashion very typical—but somehow always surprising—of Ali Smith, her latest book begins with, and is centered around, a story. Two, in fact.
Following on from her Seasonal Quartet of novels, published between and based around the events of 2016 to 2020, Companion piece, Smith’s twelfth novel, is set during the spring of 2021, as the world emerges from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and gradually regains some semblance of its former shape.
This novel introduces a new set of characters, unrelated to the quartet; Sandy Gray, a painter and a lover of words who is looking after her ailing father, and the Pelf family, each more of a piece of work than the last. Martina Inglis-Pelf, a former university classmate (and nothing more than an acquaintance) of Sandy’s, reaches out after many years, and each tells the other a story that ultimately binds them together in ways that neither could have imagined.
Martina’s tale begins at Heathrow, where she is detained for seven hours in a locked, windowless room by customs officers
while transporting the Boothby Lock, a centuries-old artifact that she is delivering to a museum exhibition curator. There, her dual citizenship is scrutinized (one officer asks why one country is not enough for her). She goes on to describe a bizarre, disembodied voice that she hears while waiting in the room, whispering an enigmatic riddle of sorts: “Curlew or curfew. You choose.”
The image of the curlew is found once again prominently in the novel’s second half, which is centered around a blacksmith’s apprentice during the late Middle Ages, whom we learn has a connection to the lock Martina has been overseeing.
The bridging of past and present in this dual-story format is an aspect of Smith’s writing that is also found in her earlier novel, How to be both—half of which is set in modern times, while the second half finds the unlikeliest connections in Renaissance Italy.
Ali Smith is a writer who never ceases to amaze and inspire with her ways of thinking and seeing, her insight into the topics that she explores with such poise, humor and open-heartedness.
Companion piece is a novel that is very much about picking up the pieces of something broken, and coming together again in some shape or form, about opening doors and extending our hands to others rather than holding them back.
So much of this book gives meaning to the idea that no person is an island; none of us stand entirely on our own, independent from the connection and companionship of others, whether it be our loved ones, neighbors, strangers, pets, our ghosts, or even our books. As with all of Smith’s books, the reader finishes the last page of Companion piece with more questions than answers, but by this point we know that she would not have it any other way. §
Snowflake, by Louise Nealon Harper, 2021.
Snowflake, Louise Nealon’s first novel, is a coming-of-age story that follows Debbie White, a young woman who is about to begin her first year at Trinity College, Dublin. Debbie’s family—which includes her eccentric mother, Maeve, Maeve’s much-younger boyfriend James, and her uncle, Maeve’s brother, the well-read Billy—own a dairy farm outside of the city, where Debbie commutes from each day following the start of the term.
Debbie is a flawed but likable narrator, and her voice carries the story along with a cool demeanor, with plenty of the wry humor and skepticism of a teenager setting out on their own in the world for the first time. She is shy and awkward, struggling to cope with her anxiety as she moves back and forth between the two different worlds that now constitute her life—the rural familiarity of her home, and the new, intimidating way of life in the city.
But perhaps Snowflake’s greatest distinction is its cast of supporting characters, each of whom adds a distinctive color and flair to the novel. It is a delight to weave in and out of focus between them as the story progresses.
Maeve, an amateur writer who believes that her dreams hold prophetic power, is a remarkable and vividly-drawn character. Her slightly erratic presence radiates off of many of the novel’s pages, and is at the center of a great deal of the story’s most harrowing and moving scenes. The relationship and interactions between Maeve and the other supporting characters is one of the book’s highlights.
Billy is a borderline alcoholic who lives in a caravan behind Debbie’s family home and works on the dairy farm owned by her family. He is the focal point of various major and minor episodes
that occur throughout the novel, including one where Debbie finds him to be impersonating famous dead writers online. Billy is a lovable character who provides much of the novel’s comic relief, but also its most touching moments; he stands equally as somewhat of a father figure and best friend for Debbie.
Xanthe (frequently misheard as Santy, as in Santa Claus) is Debbie’s first friend at Trinity, a relationship that Debbie frequently finds herself at odds over. Debbie is jealous of the seemingly-effortless way that Xanthe carries herself through life and school, but simultaneously considers Xanthe one of the closest and most comforting figures in her orbit during her first year of university. Similarly, Xanthe desires the close-knit familial bond that Debbie has, despite its less-than-ideal shortcomings.
Audrey Keane is a neighbor of Debbie’s, known for her pristine bathroom (“the most magical in all the land”), and is a piano tutor turned therapist who Debbie and her family strike a close bond with over their shared traumas. Known in the neighborhood for her own past encounters with poor mental health and addiction, Audrey also becomes close with Debbie’s brother Billy.
Snowflake is smoothly-paced despite being a debut novel that ventures a bit beyond the contemporary norm of 250 pages. The themes woven throughout the book are also explored with great care and deft precision.
It is clear to the reader that the world of Snowflake was crafted over a long period of time. These characters and their situations feel lived-in and well fleshed-out. It feels as though locals or local traditions mentioned in passing are already familiar to the reader; as though they have always been there, somewhere in the backdrop. That being said, there is nothing overwrought or overworked about the crafting of Snowflake, either. The novel has a hint of imperfection about it, which
happens to be a significant through-line and theme throughout its many episodic moments.
Perfection, or some semblance of it, is a road to ruin for several of the characters here. Debbie struggles to make herself fit into the shapes she believes society has laid out for her, entering adulthood and navigating life on her own beyond the comfort of home. Xanthe’s self-loathing is spawned by believing she is not good enough to meet the expectations of her family and those around her.
At the heart of Snowflake is a coming-of-age story that, like many of the younger voices coming out of Ireland at the moment, like Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan, provides such clarity and empathy to our modern relationships and to the world we are currently trying to navigate in the best ways we can.