‘John of John’ by Douglas Stuart

SPOILERS

This book is the third in a trilogy by Douglas Stuart, the first being the Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain (see my review here) and Young Mungo. As with his debut novel, there’s expectations that this is a Booker Prize contender – we shall see – and without having read his second book, I can see many parallels between Shuggie Bain and John of John.

In this book, Stuart changes the setting from 1980s Glasgow to Harris, an island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland in the 1990s. The book opens with young Cal Macleod returning home from art school, having been summoned home by his father, John, on account of Cal’s grandmother’s increasing ill health. It is not a willing homecoming. Cal, with his long dyed hair and op-shop clothing resents returning to the smallness of Harris and his father’s violence, while his father John is dismissive and even ashamed of his son’s appearance.

There are many dyads in this book. There’s John and his son Cal: the father a strict Free Presbyterian deacon, sheep farmer and cottage weaver who generates cloth for a crafts enterprise which insists on traditional methods in an almost pre-Industrial ‘putting-out’ system; his rebellious but cowed son John-Calum (Cal), hiding both his homosexuality and his homelessness from his father. There’s John and Ella: John still living on in the cottage belonging to his ex-wife; the elderly Ella staying on in the house with her former son-in-law, whom she dislikes, in order to be there for her grandson Cal when he returns home briefly. There’s John and his neighbour Innes MacInnes who, unknown to Cal, have had a clandestine homosexual relationship over many years, which fractured John’s marriage when his wife Grace discovered it, leading her to leave her home and son Cal and establish a relationship and new family with John’s brother on the other side of the island. There’s Cal and Doll; growing up together on Harris, having shared an adolescent homosexual relationship which Cal would like to re-establish against Doll’s reluctance.

Secrets and shame abound. John dreads news of his relationship with Innes getting out and jeopardizing his role as upright Presbyterian in his church and in the eyes of his son. Cal hides from his father his own homosexuality and the dire straits he was in as an art-school student on the mainland. Grandmother Ella hides from everyone her own understanding of the fraught dynamics of the family.

As with Shuggie Bain, there is a feeling of ‘stuckness’ here that leadens the book. As a reader you find yourself wondering if and when any of these characters are able to move beyond their shame and constrictions. Religion is a suffocating influence and John’s love for his son is manifested through violence and belittling. And as with Shuggie Bain, I felt unsatisfied by the ending, which seemed too tidy. Cal returns to university; the single mother Isla, who everyone expected Cal to marry, takes over the cottage, and Innes, and then John, finally get the courage to live their own lives beyond the island. All too neat, for me. Perhaps Stuart himself cannot bear to leave his characters in their predicament.

As well as his depiction of the paralysis of the relationships between the main characters, for me the real standout of this book was his description of landscape. I felt cold just reading it and it seemed just as wet, windswept and dour as ‘Shetland’ and other northern television shows I watch. The relationship between John and his namesake lie at the heart of the book, but I think that it’s the setting that I will remember best

So, Booker Prize shortlist?- yes, I think so. Will it win? – for me, a little too much like Shuggie Bain

My rating: 8/10

Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library

Read because: I’m in a group which is following the Booker Prize