JOHN OF JOHN (2026)
By Douglas Stuart
Grove, 400 pages.
★★★★★
In May, I was in England. Back in the States there was a discussion of what the “big” books of summer would be, a list peppered with schmaltzy romances, graphic novels, and the usual suspects (Collen Hoover, John Grisham, Stephen King, Danielle Steel…). In the U.K. the reading public anticipated John of John by Douglas Stuart. If the name rings a bell, he’s the author of Shuggie Bain, which won the 2020 Booker Prize for fiction. He followed with Young Mungo, which was highly regarded, but John of John is already shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. Stuart is Scottish and lives in New York City part of the year with his husband. He has been called a queer writer, but mostly Stuart’s characters are complex people some of whom simply happen to be gay.
John of John is set on the remote Outer Hebrides Isle of Harris during the late 1990s. As for the title, in many places individuals introduce themselves according to their lineage. The novel’s main character calls himself “Cal,” but that’s short for John Calum McLeod. His father’s name is also John. As Cal ferries across The Minch to Harris, he is asked his name and replies, “John of John of Ian of Ian the Breabadair,” the last word meaning weaver. His recitation situates Cal within four generations. In a wee place like Harris, with a population of just 1,900 souls, this matters. It now adjoins the Isle of Lewis; though they were once separate islands, and are quite different. I’ve been to both and rock-strewn Harris looks as if the glacier just left last week.
Twenty-two-year-old Cal has been told that “Ma,” actually his grandmother Ella, is seriously ill. He leaves his art school in Edinburgh to care for her, only to arrive and find she is as feisty as a golden eagle. Speaking of birds, Calum actually means dove in Scots Gaelic, but you can be forgiven if thought it might mean Calvin, as in the dour Reformation figure John Calvin, whose Scottish acolyte John Knox was even more strict. Harris is one of the last toeholds of the Free Presbyterian Church–pronounced “kirk”– as “ch” is usually sounded as a hard K in Gaelic. There’s little that’s “free” about the predestination-centered Presbyterians of Harris. You can imagine that Harris is a hard place to be gay, especially when your sheep-farming father is a kirk preceptor and deacon with decided views on how one should observe religion and a white-hot temper used to smack the wrongdoing out of his son. Cal cannot tell his father of his predilections, even though he has committed several “sinful” acts between Glasgow and Harris. Ella has suspicions, but she’s decidedly not a kirk-goer, refuses to speak Gaelic, and curses worse than any of the island’s fishermen.
Only a handful of islanders know Cal’s secret. A childhood friend, “Doll” Macdonald, has been a partner during bouts of drunkenness, though even he shares the view that Cal might marry his fair, book-smart sister Isla. She would welcome that, but she reads Cal pretty well and pivots to wanting to escape Harris and attend the University of Glasgow.
John the Elder has a very good friend, the soft-spoken Innes MacInnes and he, too, will factor into the gathering drama. Harris might be sparsely populated place, but how many humans do you need for big secrets, raging passions, hypocrisy, and violent temperaments to raise mayhem? John of John is a sometimes-harrowing tale of isolation, repression, pain, and a father-son relationship. For all of his good intentions, Cal can be as cruel as his father, and that’s not the only way in which he hasn’t fallen far from the family tree.
This is not a novel that depends upon thrills, high-energy plotting, or mystery. We see most things through Cal’s eyes, but can he be trusted to curate how his own drama transpires? In many respects, what is left unsaid or swept under the proverbial rug is more toxic than what is. I mentioned The Minch earlier, which has a reputation for being unpredictable to the point of treachery. In Harris legends, The Minch is the home of malevolent kelpies, shape-shifting spirits who lure fishermen to their doom. John of John often portends such dangers, but we have to wait to see how the various crossings wash ashore.
Rob Weir
