A Douglas Stuart novel making an appearance on the 2026 Booker longlist makes it almost impossible not to pick it up. His books are rarely easy reads, they are intense, intimate and hold you in a tight grip while taking you into lives where love, shame, masculinity and identity collide. John of John is no exception and it may be Stuart at his most quietly devastating.
\n\nSet on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, the novel centres on a father and son, both trying to negotiate identity in very different ways. John Macleod stayed on the island, became a respected pillar of the church and community, and built his life around faith, propriety and the expectations of those around him. His son, John-Calum aka Cal did what his father could not: he left. But Cal comes back, with loneliness filling his heart and with a lot of debt. His grandmother Ella's illness gives him a reason to return to the croft, though the island he had escaped has not become any easier to inhabit. There is his father, watching him closely, there is the question of his sexuality, which Cal knows would make him an outsider in a…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
