Douglas Stuart’s third novel sees his much-hailed prose settle itself into the lunar landscape of the Isle of Harris, Scotland. Drenched by wind-swept, almost horizontal rain and the ebb and flow of the Atlantic Ocean, John of John tells the story of a devoutly Presbyterian father and his son who, after graduating from an art school on the mainland, returns home with a Kurt Cobain hairstyle and an awareness of a world much bigger than the island he grew up on.
Stuart recites to the audience, which hums with a slight Scottish lilt as young and old readers pour down the stairs of the theatre, how he found himself on the Outer Hebrides in the run-up to the publication of his renowned 2020 debut, Shuggie Bain. He’d saved some money to take a year or so away from his work in the fashion industry and give the novel the attention it deserved, but was driven crazy in anticipation of its release. Attempting to soothe his anxiety (and motivated by a long-standing resentment of American tourists who have seen more of his home country than he has), he planned a trip across the Western Isles of Scotland. He joked that his husband jumped at the idea of sending him away, sick of the incessant fretting.
At first, it was the convergence of language, religion, crofting, and tweeding which appealed to the author. He describes an eagerness to dispel the misconception that rural farming men are not culturally curious. John, the central father figure of John of John, is defiant and strict in his ideas of masculinity, but these notions of manliness are absolutely inclusive of literature and creativity.
Language and a pride of culture, too, are pillars of his identity. John attends a book club and discusses Wuthering Heights with a group of Harris men, but one of the attendees is ruthlessly mocked when he begins to cry as he dwells on the book’s tragic ending, and he is immediately given the nickname ‘Cathy’.
The evening’s host, Greg Thorpe (Manchester-based creative producer and writer of both fiction and non-fiction), asks Douglas whether the genesis of John of John was rooted in place or plot. This question prompts a discussion of how he has developed as a writer over the course of his three published novels, and the author reflects on initially bringing the energy of a city-based writer to his latest work (‘Plot! Plot! Plot!’). Over the course of the writing process, however, he had to learn how to take it slower and appreciate the lively stagnation of island life.
A pivotal moment, he recalls, came after a conversation about the bachelors of the Outer Hebrides who ‘missed their moment’. When Stuart, perhaps getting too comfortable after gathering hundreds of hours of audio interviews, suggested to one of the locals that many of those unmarried men and women on the islands would be gay, his remark was quickly shrugged off. “She was neither cruel nor homophobic,” Stuart assures the audience, “But that was when I realised that the book was never about the return of the prodigal son; it was about the family he left behind.”
After an hour of conversation between Thorpe and the author, time is made for a brief Q&A. One audience member asks which shape Douglas Stuart visualises this novel as (he has previously described Shuggie Bain as a whirlwind and Young Mungo as a tightening knot), to which he replies, ‘John of John is a crashing wave’. Another question leads to a discussion of the 90s culture of young gay men writing letters to one another for years on end and never meeting. “We were corresponding like Brontës,” jokes Stuart. As the evening wraps up, animated attendees form a queue in the lobby area of Contact Theatre, echoing words of appraisal as they wait to have their books signed.
