This beautiful, devastating, wonderful book… John of John by Douglas Stuart is my first, hands-down five-star read this year.
The story begins simply – Cal, out of money and with little to show for his art school education in Edinburgh, takes the ferry home to the island of Harris –
…the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.
In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life –
He made a list of the things that he had missed about home: the quiet, Doll Macdonald, the sea. Then he made a list of the things he dreaded: the quiet, Doll Macdonald, the sea.
Cal is 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 the island, John is dismayed by his son’s loud music and long hair (pronouncing his disapproval, he says, “I could do without becoming known as the man who has a hugger for a son”) and how he seems unwilling to be Saved.
Cal, John and Ella settle into a strained routine and as the seasons pass, the threads holding them together begin to fray.
The themes in this book are complex yet familiar – the homecoming of the prodigal son; the weight of shame and expectation; what constitutes a community; the ‘protection’ and ‘threat’ of religion; the cost of ‘progress’; legacy; rejection; various forms of loneliness… I could go on and on.
…he understood that the congregation was captive, not just geographically, but by the expectations of their neighbours. They policed themselves through shame and slights and petty judgements much better than he could in his sermons.
There was so much I loved about this book but I’ll keep it to a top five:
01. Sense of place – how does Stuart manage to create a place that feels both intimate and epic at the same time? And despite the descriptions of the island landscape being desolate, flat, and grey, he gives the place life.
It rained without end for the next few days. It was the type of rain that separated them from the world.
There were deer on the moor, they shone like pennies in the broken sunlight.
The clouds snagged on the hillside and pressed down upon the island. Trapped by their own weight, they sank lower and lower until the sky finally ripped and the rain returned.
02. The character of Ella, who is part of almost every page of this book (literally or her influence). There is one scene where, after Cal fights with John, he locks himself in his room and vows to leave. Ella sits outside his door –
…the soft murmur of wool against wood. The noise descended like she was sliding down the door… “He doesn’t know how to say sorry.” Her fingertips appeared under the gap at the bottom, searching the air for a sign of him. Cal lifted his foot. He tested her fingers with his socked heel… “There ye are,” she said…
The scene ends with Ella sliding a ‘sudden full moon… pockmarked with craters… made of the palest gold…‘ (a pancake) under the door, ‘…as though she had known he would lock himself in his room and had the foresight to bake something flat and find something thin enough to slide it in on.’ There was more to the scene but suffice to say the tenderness crushed me.
“I find what men know and what men admit to knowing to be very different things.”
03. Stuart’s stunning writing (and storytelling)
The ferry rocked as its wake hit the jetty. The tourists tottered, delighted to be thrown about one last time. The ramblers were shivering. They pulled their anoraks tight, their wind-scaled faces peering through elasticated peepholes.
There was a cauterising amount of whisky. The men swallowed it without pleasure. They gathered and chain-smoked behind the Macdonalds’ byre. They couldn’t bear to be indoors, trapped with their women who could not be still.
She could handle Glaswegians, men who roiled and churned, it was the quiet, loch-deep rage of the islanders she found terrifying.
04. Sheep play a role in this story – there’s an important bellwether ewe, and lots of fascinating information about textiles – weaving, dying wool, and the craft of making Harris tweed.
The sheep of Uig on the wild Atlantic coast with their sandblasted, bone-dry fleeces defied the use of mechanical clippers.
05. The forgivable, flawed characters
Although he never said it out loud, John felt that Cal thought their lives were lacking, as if things that had sustained him as a boy bored him now. Cal’s gaze tainted the things that John had always loved and made him feel like he should apologise for the life he had built.
He had no way of knowing how much lying it would take or how those lies would take root, how they needed constant tending, how they would grow thorny and wrap around all those who cared for him until they were part of the tangle.
Avoid reading too many in-depth reviews that go into detail about the relationships between the characters. Instead, let the story unfold and know that Stuart’s delivery is impeccable. Also know that this is an outstanding choice for book groups (pencil in a late night because there is so much to talk about).
5/5
John said hello to the MacInnes men while Innes put the kettle on the stove. Innes asked if he would take something to eat, and when he said he would not, Innes negotiated with him until he agreed to have a cup of tea, and then if he was having tea, why not at least have some cheese on toast?
