John of John

The extraordinary new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain

By: Douglas Stuart

Narrated by: Lorne MacFadyen

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author of SHUGGIE BAIN and YOUNG MUNGO.

'This book is special' - Colm Tóibín
'Passionate, liberating, and gorgeous' - Min Jin Lee
'Brilliant and rare' - Ann Patchett
'A masterpiece' - Elaine Feeney
'A fierce, glorious sting of a novel' - Lauren Groff
'Mesmeric, transportive, vividly sensory' - Bernardine Evaristo

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, 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 home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved. As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

John of John is the heartbreaking story of a young man’s return home and how the bonds of family life are torn by the weight of expectation. It confirms Douglas Stuart as one of the great British writers at work today.

Critic reviews

John of John has the emotional range and sense of sympathy of his earlier books, but this book is special, it has an urgency, an immediacy, a brilliant sense of place, the drama of fierce emotion repressed, concealed and volcanically exposed. (Colm Tóibín, author of Long Island)

To read John of John is to move to the Isle of Harris and take up residence in the family croft. The novel is so immersive, so all-encompassing, that I felt like I was living in it. Douglas Stuart has written something brilliant and rare (Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake)

Set against the stark beauty of the Hebrides, where the landscape, in all its colour and texture, is as alive and commanding as its people . . . No one crafts characters with the depth and precision of Stuart—John of John is a masterpiece (Elaine Feeney, author of Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way)

John of John is another mesmeric, transportive, vividly sensory and astonishingly textured novel from one of our greatest writers (Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other )

John of John is a fierce, glorious sting of a novel. Douglas Stuart has somehow lifted the rocky, windswept landscape of the Scottish Western Isles—as well as its externally stark and thwarted, if internally blazing, characters—and replicated both with utter flawlessness on the page. What an astonishing feat of literary fiction (Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds)

Douglas Stuart explores the visible and invisible chains of love forged between a parent and child — as each grapples with his respective faith and complex humanity. Stuart’s characters yearn and yield tenderly as they struggle with fate and free will. The inimitable world of John of John is passionate, liberating, and gorgeous (Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, finalist for the National Book Award)

John of John is Douglas Stuart's finest novel yet, and that is saying something . . . he infuses his narrative with an authentic understanding of the essence of Hebridean identity; he creates a novel that has the grandeur of classical literature but the readability and relatability of a contemporary masterpiece . . . Epic and intimate, this is the kind of novel that enlarges your very capacity for empathy (Kevin MacNeil author of The Stornoway Way)

Breathtaking, life affirming, transcendent storytelling. John of John shows Stuart to be a true and abiding talent (Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Dance Tree)

A wonderfully gifted writer

Stuart has cemented his status as a vital new voice for the working class

Douglas Stuart has a rare gift . . . A major literary talent

An enthralling writer

Smart and sympathetic to everyone in its beautifully-realised world, John of John is literary fiction at its best.