Review of John of John by Douglas Stuart

A young man is called back from the overwhelming, limitless city to his rural Scottish hometown, which is ruled by piety and inflexibility. His claustrophobic community and rigid father gradually give way to glimmers of hope for new beginnings and self-actualization.

Cal is fresh out of art school, deeply in debt, and desperately poor, staying on acquaintances' couches, cleaning buildings (and being cheated out of most of his modest pay), and dipping in and out of soulless trysts with other men. Then his gruff father John calls him home to their rural Scottish croft on Isle of Harris to help take care of Cal's grandmother, who is sick and lives with John--her ex-son-in-law.

In a way, being needed and escaping his financial struggles in the city is a relief to Cal (who is named John-Calum--John of John--after his father). Upon his return home, his community feels alternately claustrophobically small and reassuringly familiar. Cal fears that once he's back he will never escape again to truly explore his artistic dreams and desire for a fulfilling relationship with another man--neither of which is a possibility at home.

Cal's father John is emotionally closed-off and is at times physically abusive. John's expectations of his son are sky-high, and his churchgoing, stoicism, dogged work weaving tweed and caring for the sheep, and repeated denial of his own potential joy all serve to cement his rigid view of what his child should do and who he should be.

We quickly realize that Cal--gifted at identifying nuances of color, creatively drawn to designing clothing, and seemingly at the very beginning of his discovery of his art and his true self--is hiding essential parts of himself from his father and those in his hometown. The only person who truly sees him is his spunky grandmother Ella--who, it turns out, is not ill after all, but wanted him home and was willing to deceive in order to achieve this end.

Various power plays take place within Cal's family and among those in the community, as well as emotional blackmail, suicidal ideation, shame, heartbreak, and dread. Stepping outside the bounds of propriety is not remotely acceptable in this small world, and judgment for doing so is harsh.

The women in the story--Cal's mother Grace, his grandmother Ella, and his best friend Isla--hold the truth of most matters at hand, stoically keeping secrets that could ruin multiple lives and going about the business of being heartbroken, practical, ruthlessly tough figures in their world.

Within the complex web of his father's harsh manner, his mother's abandonment, his childhood best friend's pain, his former lover's disastrous addiction, and his town's blind focus on piety and its unfailing inflexibility, we also witness strange, poignant versions of acceptance, of loyalty, of mercifully averting eyes to certain behavior, of sacrifice for one another, and of instances of incredible selflessness.

The ending was a brief but thrilling emotional roller coaster in which it became clear that Cal truly saw his father and the complicated, haunted, yearning life of denial he has led; in which a double-cross is flipped into a double double-cross, and in which, like a shuffled deck, various injustices are resolved and fall into place one after another.

This was heartbreaking, often dark, frighteningly confining, and, ultimately, redemptive, containing beautiful gems of delight and hope.

I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of Grove Press and NetGalley.

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Douglas Stuart is also the author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo.

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