The Loch
Imagery is used ironically to describe the beauty of the Scottish countryside. A major turning point in the story occurs when Mungo gets his first chance to actually see one of the fabled Scottish lochs. The innocent beauty of nature will prove to misleading; a façade covering up the darkness which plays out within its beauty:
“The far side of the loch was walled in by the carpeted hillsides. Beyond these were jagged Munros, the denuded mountains stretching as far as Mungo could see. The sun illuminated the eastern face of the crags and left the other faces in deep shadow. These shadows held pockets of speckled snow that looked like flaking paint, like old coats of white emulsion that were peeling away from the moss-covered hills, as if it were the handiwork of a careless God. Each mountain appeared as though it had been chipped away from a larger piece of flint.”
Off to the Loch
Although the imagery excerpted above will show up until well into the narrative, the trip there is foreshadowed early on. In fact, the novel opens on the imagery of Mungo preparing to head out of Glasgow for his first foray into the country:
“Her boy was stooped slightly, the rucksack a little hump on his back. Unsure of what he should take, he had packed it with half-hearted nonsense: an oversized Fair Isle jumper, teabags, his dog-eared sketchbook, a game of Ludo, and some half-used tubes of medicated ointment. Yet he wavered on the corner as though the bag might tip him backwards into the gutter. Mo-Maw knew the bag was not heavy. She knew it was the bones of him that had become a dead weight.”
The Glasgow Cathedral
Readers are treated to a brief, but meaningful visit inside the Glasgow Cathedral. They are taken there so that it is seen through the eyes of Mungo’s sister Jodie on her first and only trip inside. She is the only member of the family to attain popularity. Everyone loves Jodie, but she also has a contemplative side and a contentious relationship with her unpopular mother:
“As the other girls took out their RE notebooks to rub at the stone carvings, Jodie found a stained-glass window of the patron saint, St Kentigern, or as he was colloquially known to Glaswegians, St Mungo. Here St Mungo was depicted as a melancholy boy, cradling a fat salmon, looking sorry that it was dead. Jodie had watched the afternoon light splinter through the saint and cross the dusty cathedral floor and thought of her brother. It was a peaceful window, somehow lonesome. Jodie had sighed before it. It was unlike Mo-Maw to get something so right.”
A Bonny Lad
This is a Scottish novel through and through. Dialect is used, but sparingly; just enough to convey Scotland without requiring a translation every few pages. And the characters, too, are Scottish through and through as the imagery used to describe them reveals again and again:
“Mungo had always been the bonniest of the Hamiltons. His brother and sister shared his chestnut hair and light olive complexion, so different from their mousy, wan mother…Jodie had to admit that Mungo wore it the best. Where the freckles and the sallowness looked slightly grubby on her and Hamish, on Mungo it looked so creamy that you wanted to take a spoon to him.”
