‘John of John’ book review: Douglas Stuart returns to Scotland

The windswept crofts of Scotland’s mountainous isles may not seem like fertile terrain, but Douglas Stuart knows how to breathe life into them in his latest novel, John of John. A Booker Prize winner for Shuggie Bain, Stuart has a knack for transporting readers to parts of his motherland where gay characters are seldom explored. Like John Irving writing about New England, Stuart’s mind and heart are fixed in the place that raised him and offered him memorable characters—and prejudiced views.

The ones we know the least

Stuart beautifully communicates the longing that came with a pre-Internet gay dating scene, particularly—as with John of John—in rural Scotland. In the novel, John-Calum (Cal, to you) returns home to his spirited grandmother, Ella, and reserved father John. Cal has recently graduated from an arts college, but he’s had trouble finding a job on the mainland. He decides to return to his family’s croft to tend lambs—and his yearning heart.

Cal sends off letters to a boy he finds in a magazine ad, flirts with a childhood friend, and feels attraction toward his father’s friend. His father is a Christian zealot, so, naturally, conversation between John and Cal is terse and never forthright. But Stuart wisely understands that sometimes the ones we know the least are the ones we’re closest to.

Stuart establishes early that John, too, is a closeted gay man—not to set up a coming-out story, but one about a father and son who, individually and together, cannot express themselves in a conservative town where everyone notices when you unlatch your door.

John of John has a fervid heart, even if it mostly crackles during its deftly handled moments of intimacy. Sometimes the region’s local color enlivens the book with snappy writing, but peripheral characters can also feel like plot devices. Key episodes—like John’s attempt to attend therapy—stir emotions, but the book can also feel drawn out, a bit too long for the topics it is exploring. Then again, when you are waiting for your life to begin, doesn’t that feel like an eternity?