As well as queerness in the early part of the book there is a strong sense of Mungo being neurodiverse, but it is a bit patchy and it is latter identified as Tourette's, which seemed an incomplete explanation. But those characteristics actually seems to fade from sight as the drama of the plot takes hold which is one of the reasons that I perhaps didn’t enjoy this as much as I had hoped. It is tricky when a book comes with such high expectations it is very easy to ended feeling a little disappointed.
I also had a sense of there being too many stories going on, the plot is very crowded, and peopled with one too many easy archetypes, it might have been better for Stuart to strip it back a bit, allow more room for the richness of Mungo’s story. There is a tension between creating a vivid world and throwing the kitchen sink at a novel and for me, on this occasion, my sense is less would have been more.
At the end of the story Mungo and James escape from the city into rural Scotland, and this was an interesting move – for queer people the dominant narrative is one of liberation coming from moves in the opposite direction – such that queer identities are almost unimaginable beyond the city backdrop. This myth is increasingly being challenged – a lot of the queer poetry that is currently being written is exploring queerness in various rural contexts for example.
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