John of John
Douglas Stuart’s ruminative novel John of John breaks through the surface of a dysfunctional family to expose deeper ties and shocking secrets.
After years of experimentation in his big-city art school, Cal returns to his Presbyterian father and their windswept croft on the Isle of Harris. His expectations are informed by his miserable childhood. His father, John, is an irascible preacher and shepherd, and his grandmother, Ella, is kind but distant, trying her best to ease the tension.
With an absent mother and family members whom he fears would beat him for being queer, Cal seeks out old friends. He also hopes to find another lonely man to ease his torment. However, as his relationships with his family members and the other islanders grow, secrets leak out, threatening to break the docile religious community.
The prose is restrained; the father and son duo evolve slowly. While Cal is easy to spot as a young queer man with a strong sex drive, John, his father, is strict, a hard worker whose identity takes most of the novel to surface. Cal opens up to others with speed, responding to a M4M newspaper ad, and his confusion leaves him plenty of room to change. In converse, John’s doctrines and values shaped him into a man who still regards his past rule-breaking with deep shame. The two men’s inner worlds rupture, spilling out onto the page; they cause one another to reconsider all that they cling to with desperation. And though they are as different as can be, they question if “‘We could be the same man.’”
In the contemplative, reverberating novel John of John, the outwardly simple family dynamics of a religious Scottish family are questioned and reevaluated.
Reviewed by
Nick Gardner
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