Contemporary literature

Cal Macleod is a young textile student in Edinburgh when his father, John, orders him home to the Isle of Harris to look after his grandmother Ella. Back in the family croft, among sheep, looms and a strict Presbyterian community, the three of them share a house and a habit of saying very little to one another. Each guards a secret, and Douglas Stuart takes his time revealing how many of those secrets are already known. John of John is his third novel, and it takes him from Glasgow to the Outer Hebrides.

What stayed with me first is how original the story is. Given the premise, you expect a son hiding who he is from a harsh father. Stuart turns this around, and it is the father who is torn between his faith and a desire he has never been allowed to live. It's a surprising choice, and it gives the novel real momentum.

It also touches on a theme that literature hasn't explored enough: the conflict between rigorous religion and homosexuality. This is where I felt let down. Stuart raises the question but never really digs into it, and what should have been the heart of the book stays in the background of the plot.

The story itself is fascinating, and it's easy to picture on screen, with the island landscape, the croft and the revelations that keep coming. But Stuart seems more interested in what happens than in how he tells it. The structure is linear and the sentences, though competent, have nothing particularly distinctive about them. The characters aren't developed enough to carry the weight of the story, so the big moments hit less hard than they should. A story this strong deserves a form that matches it, and here the form is the novel's real weakness.

It's hard not to compare the book with Stuart's earlier work, and the comparison isn't kind to it. John of John is a good novel, but it doesn't match the standard he set with his first two books, and above all with Shuggie Bain, whose language and emotional depth are missing here.

Even so, it's worth reading for its original premise and its absorbing story. I just wish the writing had been as ambitious as the idea behind it.