Great Scottish Writers, Douglas Stuart (2026) John of John.

Douglas Sturt understands how fragile memories and language are and how they can be torn away from a sense of self. There’s no place for his Booker Prize winning debut novel, Shuggie Bain or his international bestseller, Young Murdo  on library shelves for books in places like Texas that ban and burn books. His protagonists are always working-class boys going to be fucked over or just fucked for being different, for being gay. If not by others, then by themselves. For that sense of shame is a living thing embodied in John of John. Stuart’s best novel.  

John of John has a lovely wee ring to it. The title refers to 22-year-old John-Calum (‘Cal’) MacLeod and his father John, who is in his fifties. Cal has two mothers. Grace, who had the grace to leave her wee boy and their fictional croft and home in Falabay, Harris, and go on living on another part of the island. Ella, his Glaswegian granny, raised him, and her apparent illness and death called him back to the island.    

Echoes here of Agnes Bain and Maureen from Stuart’s previous works. Both were alcoholics. Here it’s Cal’s first love and lover, Doll, who is seduced by the drink. But Doll is one of the saved in their Wee Free church. Cal can never be that. He’s eternally damned.  

John (senior) claims to have two loves. God and Cal. He prays to God in Gaelic, and in word and song. He’s a cantor in the local, wee Free Church, but he talks to Cal, like he talks to God, when he’s away on the mainland doing some kind of degree as he works the loom in the shed in which he weaves Harris Tweed, piecework to sell to the Island cartel. In a hand and mouth existence, every stitch can make a difference between survival and going under. But he remains tight-lipped when Cal actually comes home.

Douglas Stuart’s background as a gay man who graduated from Glasgow’s Art School and moved to New York to work in fashion gives him the eye for translating nuances in colour and heft of weight in materials to people shifting from foot to foot. Island women stand out not just for their Gaelic tongue but often for their beauty.

John’s shame is his crofting neighbour, and best friend, Innes, is more than a friend. Cal’s shame is he can’t come home and admit what everybody already suspects –that he lies with men, rather than women. In lives stitched together with poverty and the unsaid, so many secrets and so many lies wrap around and distort their lives.  

Douglas Stuart calls out and steps into human vulnerability and creates something that is truly humane. Read on.