The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author of SHUGGIE BAIN and YOUNG MUNGO.
'This book is special' - Colm Tóibín
'Passionate, liberating, and gorgeous' -Min Jin Lee
'Brilliant and rare' - Ann Patchett
'A masterpiece' - Elaine Feeney
'A fierce, glorious sting of a novel' - Lauren Groff
'Mesmeric, transportive, vividly sensory' - Bernardine Evaristo
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.
While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.
John of John is the heartbreaking story of a young man’s return home and how the bonds of family life are torn by the weight of expectation. It confirms Douglas Stuart as one of the great British writers at work today.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'This book is special' - Colm Tóibín
'Passionate, liberating, and gorgeous' -Min Jin Lee
'Brilliant and rare' - Ann Patchett
'A masterpiece' - Elaine Feeney
'A fierce, glorious sting of a novel' - Lauren Groff
'Mesmeric, transportive, vividly sensory' - Bernardine Evaristo
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.
While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.
John of John is the heartbreaking story of a young man’s return home and how the bonds of family life are torn by the weight of expectation. It confirms Douglas Stuart as one of the great British writers at work today.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"John of John is a profound and unflinching exploration of masculinity, sexuality, faith, and the haunting weight of heritage on the human soul. Set against the stark beauty of the Hebrides, where the landscape, in all its colour and texture, is as alive and commanding as its people, this novel delves into paternal silence, love and loneliness, and the unsettling sense that we are never truly unwatched. Written in timeless prose, it speaks with urgent relevance. No one crafts characters with the depth and precision of Stuart - John of John is a masterpiece." - Elaine Feeney
"John of John is a fierce, glorious sting of a novel. Douglas Stuart has somehow lifted the rocky, windswept landscape of the Scottish Western Isles - as well as its externally stark and thwarted, if internally blazing, characters - and replicated both with utter flawlessness on the page. What an astonishing feat of literary fiction." - Lauren Groff
"Breathtaking, life affirming, transcendent storytelling. John of John shows Stuart to be a true and abiding talent." - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
"Like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Douglas Stuart explores the visible and invisible chains of love forged between a parent and child - as each grapples with his respective faith and complex humanity. Stuart's characters yearn and yield tenderly as they struggle with fate and free will. The inimitable world of John of John is passionate, liberating, and gorgeous." - Min Jin Lee
"This is literary phenomenon Douglas Stuart's finest novel yet, and that is saying something. Stuart stacks achievement upon achievement like stones on a towering cairn: he infuses his narrative with an authentic understanding of the essence of Hebridean identity; he creates a novel that has the grandeur of classical literature but the readability and relatability of a contemporary masterpiece; he brings to life a most astute understanding of individual psychology, community relationships, and everyday living in a geographically and culturally distinctive place. The novel weaves its generous, impassioned, transfixing way towards a breathless and unpredictable conclusion. Epic and intimate, this is the kind of novel that enlarges your very capacity for empathy." - Kevin MacNeil
"To read John of John is to move to the Isle of Harris and take up residence in the family croft. The novel is so immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and rare." - Ann Patchett
"Douglas Stuart's John of John has the emotional range and sense of sympathy of his earlier books, but this book is special, it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed." - Colm Tóibín
"John of John is gorgeous - the most satisfying novel I've read in a long time. The Western Isles of Scotland may be isolated, yet I could see, smell, hear, and touch these memorable characters, and get caught up in their world. Stuart's tale is soulful, tragic, comic, uplifting, and ultimately so very satisfying. Destined to be a classic." - Abraham Verghese
"John of John is a fierce, glorious sting of a novel. Douglas Stuart has somehow lifted the rocky, windswept landscape of the Scottish Western Isles - as well as its externally stark and thwarted, if internally blazing, characters - and replicated both with utter flawlessness on the page. What an astonishing feat of literary fiction." - Lauren Groff
"Breathtaking, life affirming, transcendent storytelling. John of John shows Stuart to be a true and abiding talent." - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
"Like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Douglas Stuart explores the visible and invisible chains of love forged between a parent and child - as each grapples with his respective faith and complex humanity. Stuart's characters yearn and yield tenderly as they struggle with fate and free will. The inimitable world of John of John is passionate, liberating, and gorgeous." - Min Jin Lee
"This is literary phenomenon Douglas Stuart's finest novel yet, and that is saying something. Stuart stacks achievement upon achievement like stones on a towering cairn: he infuses his narrative with an authentic understanding of the essence of Hebridean identity; he creates a novel that has the grandeur of classical literature but the readability and relatability of a contemporary masterpiece; he brings to life a most astute understanding of individual psychology, community relationships, and everyday living in a geographically and culturally distinctive place. The novel weaves its generous, impassioned, transfixing way towards a breathless and unpredictable conclusion. Epic and intimate, this is the kind of novel that enlarges your very capacity for empathy." - Kevin MacNeil
"To read John of John is to move to the Isle of Harris and take up residence in the family croft. The novel is so immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and rare." - Ann Patchett
"Douglas Stuart's John of John has the emotional range and sense of sympathy of his earlier books, but this book is special, it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed." - Colm Tóibín
"John of John is gorgeous - the most satisfying novel I've read in a long time. The Western Isles of Scotland may be isolated, yet I could see, smell, hear, and touch these memorable characters, and get caught up in their world. Stuart's tale is soulful, tragic, comic, uplifting, and ultimately so very satisfying. Destined to be a classic." - Abraham Verghese
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