Fifty pages into John of John, Douglas Stuart’s atmospheric third novel, you can almost feel the cold, damp air of the fictional Hebridean village of Falabay, and come to recognise its brooding and eccentric inhabitants like old friends and neighbours.
Through a microcosm of everyday island life, Stuart demonstrates his finely honed skill in exploring the fundamental tensions of the human condition that have preoccupied men and women for centuries.
An omniscient narrator presides over John of John as we follow John-Calum Macleod – Cal – returning home to the Isle of Harris after student life in Edinburgh. Recently graduated from art school, Cal has been studying fashion and textiles, in an echo of the author’s own history.
It is clear Cal’s academic sojourn to the “mainland” has not been as abundant as he had dreamed of – both financially (he’s been working as a cleaner and sofa surfing) or in his experiences (we’re told Cal’s had less sex than he’d hoped for, and even that was disappointing).
A vein of shame
A young gay man hailing from a strict and repressive Free Presbyterian background, Cal has grown up learning about the Aids epidemic through the disapproval of the church and images of young men dying on the news. It’s the late 1990s, a pre-internet age when gay networks existed below the radar. Still in the closet as far as his island is concerned, the torment and guilt of his sexuality weigh heavily on Cal throughout the novel.
Learning that his maternal grandmother Ella is ill, Cal is persuaded to return home by his lay-preacher father, John, during one of their weekly phone calls. Ever since Cal left home, these calls have involved the Gaelic “sing-back” tradition of Salmadaireachd, with his father reciting lines from the New Testament in their native language – testing his son’s knowledge by his responses, ever reminding him of where he really belongs.
Once home, we’re witness to the claustrophobic dysfunction of the Macleods’ home, a small croft where John rears sheep, weaves tweed, and has strong connections to the “Wee Free” church. John struggles to show anything other than contempt towards his son, who has come home with growing debt and orange hair.
Depressed and lonely, Cal seems to regress into teenage immaturity, bleaching his hair white and cutting it into a bob to regain some control and further irritate his father.
Ella, the not-actually-ailing grandmother, provides comedic relief for the reader at times, but is ultimately as heartbroken and tragic as the rest of the book’s characters. John is hateful and bitter towards Ella, whose daughter Grace left him for his own brother when Cal was a child.
Believing Ella does not speak or understand Gaelic, John insists on speaking to Cal in their native tongue in front of her, in an act of deliberate exclusion. Cal and Ella share a close and at times warm connection, despite being rude and crude with one another in a way that only people who connect can.
Their relationship, which is the closest Cal has to a maternal influence, is challenged when he discovers that Ella plans to sign the tenancy of the house and croft over to his mother, Grace, rather than his father, who has toiled over the land for decades.
For much of the novel, Grace is the point of blame for the breakdown of the Macleod household, with John left feeling emasculated by the act of his wife leaving him for his brother.
Unravelling
However, as the threads of Stuart’s intricately woven story start to unravel, we discover that Grace left her husband (and her son and mother) when she discovered a secret that seems to be at the centre of John’s hatred of the world and himself.
Once some of the key revelations emerge, the drama unfolds at an almost relentless pace. The simmering volatility between Cal and John erupts into violence when John beats Cal so badly that Ella is forced to stitch her grandson’s eyebrow with a needle and thread.
Further revealing the stultifying repression and frustrations that blight island life, Cal’s childhood friend Doll – with whom he shared youthful sexual encounters – is an alcoholic. Meanwhile, Doll’s academically gifted sister Isla becomes an unwed teenage mother, and is considered a ruined woman by her zealously religious family and community.
The drama and (sometimes verging on implausible) twists of this novel make it feel like a soap opera, in the traditional sense of the term: small, interconnected characters and high melodrama, with domestic spaces as scenes of desire, revelation and unpredictability.
But this is not a criticism. Stuart’s lyrical prose and atmospheric narrative elevate the genre – reimagining the domestic and familial tropes by focusing on the unrequited affections of the men in the story.
John of John is about the secrets and lies that fester under an oppressive atmosphere that is thick with damp and shame. While the novel ends with a sense of hope, a gloom lingers. We leave the characters knowing that repercussions are yet to unravel, like those unspooling skeins of wool the Macleod men desperately weave.
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