Mungo has a ‘face that looked like he might sneeze, but never would’ and St Christopher has a ‘yellow face, wrinkling like an overripe apple’. The novel is darker than Shuggie Bain, but Stuart retains the ingenious Wodehousian similes that characterise his prose. Decisive are two relationships: one with James, a pigeon-keeping Catholic boy from across the housing scheme the other with Hamish, Mungo’s older brother and the leader of the local Protestant gang. In parallel chapters, Stuart describes how Mungo got to this juncture. Her plan is for ‘St Christopher’, ‘an angular man in his late fifties or early sixties…withered and jaundiced by neglectful eating and hard drinking’, and ‘Gallowgate’, a twentysomething with ‘arms roped with lean muscle that spoke to a heavy trade, or years of fighting, or both’ to ‘make a man’ of her son. The story begins with Mungo’s often-absent mother coercing him to go for a weekend of fishing and camping with two lager-swilling men she knows from Alcoholics Anonymous. Early on he’s described as a ‘waif’ – a Dickensian word that alerts the reader to the tenor of the novel. His complexion, vocal tic and poor-fitting clothes lead people to think he’s ‘thirteen, tops’. The protagonist, Mungo Hamilton, is a frail, fatherless 15-year-old, but appears much younger.
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