If Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart went into the disintegration of an alcoholic mother, then his latest book, John of John, digs into the half-life of a father whose repressed emotions, much like Agnes Bain’s alcoholism, spill into the lives of every major character in this beautiful, sea-soaked novel. It is little surprise, then, that Stuart says in an interview, “I have a lot of empathy for parents.”
Essentially a book about homecoming, John of John, set in the 1990s, is unlike its predecessors. When arts graduate John Calum-Macleod (Cal) returns to the Isle of Harris, an island on the edge of Scotland, at the insistence of his father, the local precentor John Macleod, he is drunk and closeted, sporting “flame-coloured hair” that creates a “strange tension between the masculine and the feminine”. Cal dreads coming home to look after his maternal grandmother, Ella, because of his sexuality. But within the first few pages, we learn that his devoutly Protestant father has also nurtured a similar secret: he has long been in love with his childhood friend, Innes MacInnes, a relationship that has led to the collapse of his marriage to Cal’s mother, Grace.
Isolation is not only atmospheric but forms the very backbone of the story. It is the isolation of having to choose between faith and desire, of loving too much, too dangerously, at a place that has accepted “that docile sufferance of God’s plan.”
With such a surprising and original premise, Stuart tasks himself with exploring what it means to carry inherited shame, and how it manifests as an estrangement from the people we love and care for. John is angry, guilty, never insincere in his prayers, always “apologising to his Maker for how he had been made.” His disapproval of Cal’s appearance and his insistence on controlling and disciplining him, all backfire when Cal protests, leading to an episode that turns violent. “He [John] thought about the life he had tied himself to so that Cal had something to tie himself to, and now that Cal didn’t want it, he realised that he hadn’t wanted it either,” Stuart writes.
Just like Stuart’s previous works that explored the lives of queer men in working-class Glasgow, here, too, the spirit is the same. John and Cal, both tweed weavers, spend their days rearing and shearing sheep in their croft house, where they live with Ella. Hardly a kind word is ever spoken—neither in Gaelic nor English—and the exchange between the three is often filled with the insulting humour that Stuart has mastered. The dysfunctional trio feeds off each other’s loneliness, aware of one another’s vulnerabilities, habits and personal businesses in the ways families often are. Isolation, it appears, is not only atmospheric in the prose but forms the very backbone of the story. It is the isolation of having to choose between faith and desire, of being pulled back to the place you have spent your life running from, and of loving too much, too dangerously, at a place that has accepted “that docile sufferance of God’s plan.” Islands within islands, as Ella puts it.
The tortured romance between John and Innes becomes the novel’s emotional centre. In their forties, the two men, handsome and rugged, have lived in disguise their entire lives, stealing moments in hidden pockets of the islands, at “a sheltered place where the earth had split and made a soft bed for them.” The first time we see both of them alone at Innes’ house, John goes through a ritual Innes is intimately aware of: he pretends to go to the toilet, checks every corner and cupboard of the house to make sure they are completely alone. “It went like this, loving John Macleod. You did it against all your reason, against all your better judgement, and in that exact moment he starved the embers into submission, he had the skill to blow on them gently and ignite them again,” Stuart writes.
Like John, Innes is deeply Christian, but doesn’t nurture the self-contempt that John has for himself. He dreams of living with John, of building a life together once John allows Cal to return to the mainland. Interestingly, Cal, too, has a secret affection for Innes, suspicious that he might be gay because he is unmarried at his age. When Cal thinks of confirming this with John, he is pushed back by the “self-incriminating question… the most awful thing he could ever suggest about another man.”
The sensibility and nuance that Stuart writes with about three queer men is remarkable. Their fears and vulnerabilities, sometimes stemming from the same root, take different shapes and shades. It is particularly refreshing to read when queer characters are often displayed with the same colours. The novel doesn’t villainise the society either, but suggests a negotiation that we often make with our inner worlds to survive. In the backstories of Ella and Grace, too, layers of hurt feel heart-wrenchingly real. Isla Macdonal, a minor character who anchors Cal’s young spirit, is a delight. Stuart writes the characters with such humanity and depth that they stay with you for a long time.
The unforgiving beauty of Harris, the reproductive cycles of sheep, the sea, the colours, and the hardworking lives of farmers, weavers, and fishermen, are all woven into the story with painstaking detail.
And then, rain is a protagonist that sweeps the narrative every time it arrives, so much so that by the time you close the book, you get that soporific feeling that often comes with monsoon. Yet, John might continue to work in his croft, because “God was yet to make a rain that could keep John Macleod indoors.”