John of John by Douglas StuartMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved Stuart’s heartbreaking novel, Shuggie Bain, (see review here) , and this one is as good or even better. For those who found Shuggie Bain too depressing, John of John has some humour mixed with the sadness and ends on a potentially optimistic note. Set in the remote Outer Hebrides, a chain of barren islands off the coast of Scotland, this novel tells the story of the many-layered, complicated relationships among struggling, isolated sheep farmers in the 1980s, before the Internet and mass tourism gave inhabitants much awareness of the world outside. People are known by their lineage more than last names, thus “John of John of Ian of Ian the Breabadair”. (Breadbadair meant weaver.)
The story focuses mainly on the difficult relationship between the elder John, who is a weaver and strict Calvinist preacher in a shrinking parish. After a divorce, his mother-in-law, Ella, who owns the house, stays on to help him raise John junior (known as Cal). The novel starts when the father – after their regular telephone prayer session, which is what their conversations mainly consist of — pressures the son to come home from college, using the excuse that his grandmother is not well. Cal has finished his art studies, but hasn’t found work and is couch surfing, struggling to feed himself, and trying to escape his reality with drugs and gay sex. He does not look forward to returning to the closeted, judgemental, bleak life of the island but worries about Ella and feels duty-bound to go.
It turns out almost nothing is as it seems. Everybody has secrets, some that completely change your views of the characters and their behaviour. By the end of the book, one even has empathy for the father, who, on the surface is an awful man.
My only complaint is a minor one: for much of the book I was frustrated with Cal for not leaving. At the same time, though, he didn’t have a great option to go to (let alone money to get there and build a new life), he felt strong loyalties to friends and family, and he’s generally indecisive and unsure about himself. He’s also subjected to the pressures of the community, which still believes that the fathers should be in control of their children, even adult ones. So his behaviour was believable.
I listened to the audiobook, wonderfully voiced by Lorne Macfadyen. As with Shuggie Bain, though, I need to buy the print edition so I can highlight the many wonderfully written descriptions, metaphors and similes. All aspiring authors can learn a lot from studying Douglas Stuart’s novels. We can also take heart from the knowledge that he had a career in fashion and business before he began writing fiction. His first novel won a Booker Prize. No MFA required. (Or maybe I shouldn’t take heart from that: maybe it means brilliant writers just have a natural talent that some of us don’t. I must take heart from the fact that many people enjoy books that aren’t filled with gorgeous metaphors. And keep studying work like Stuart’s to improve my own.)
Definitely a 5*****
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