If you liked
Books like Young Mungo
by Douglas Stuart
Young Mungo is Douglas Stuart's second novel, a tender and terrifying story of first love between two boys across a Protestant-Catholic divide in 1990s Glasgow. Beautiful and brutal, like his debut. If you want more unflinching fiction about hard childhoods and forbidden love, these are the reads.
The shortlist
What to read next
Shuggie Bainby Douglas Stuart
“Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart 2020 review. A young boy navigates childhood with his alcoholic mother in 1980s post-industrial Glasgow. Booker Prize winner.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”
The Heart's Invisible Furiesby John Boyne
“The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne 2017 review. Cyril Avery's life across seven decades - adopted out of 1945 Catholic Cork, navigating the closeted gay Ireland of the 1960s through the 2010s. Boyne's literary commercial masterwork.”
Small Things Like Theseby Claire Keegan
“Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 2021 review. A 1985 Irish coal merchant discovers what's happening at the local Magdalene laundry. Booker Prize shortlist.”
The Great Believersby Rebecca Makkai
“The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 2018 review. Two parallel narratives - Yale in the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and Fiona in 2015 Paris. National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist 2019.”
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousby Ocean Vuong
“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.”
FAQ
Common questions about Young Mungo read-alikes
- I want more Douglas Stuart.
- Shuggie Bain is the essential one, his Booker-winning debut about a boy loving his mother through her alcoholism in 1980s Glasgow. Same setting, same aching tenderness. If Young Mungo undid you, this will too.
- I want the emotional intensity pushed further.
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is the deep end, a novel about trauma and friendship that goes further than almost anything. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai handles queer love and loss through the AIDS crisis with the same devastating care.
- I want a queer coming-of-age against a hostile world.
- The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne follows a gay man across twentieth-century Ireland, and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong renders a queer immigrant childhood in luminous prose. Both share Young Mungo's subject and its beauty.
- I want the quiet, morally serious version.
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan does enormous emotional work in few pages, a Celtic working-class conscience story in a gentler key. A good palate-cleanser after Stuart's intensity.
The original