Early in Douglas Stuart’s new novel, “John of John,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/books/booker-prize-winner-douglas-stuart-shuggie-bain.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the Booker Prize-winning author</a> describes a peculiar irony: “What skinned him was that the closer he got to home, the more lost he felt.”
It’s a passing line, but it captures the tension at the heart of this magnificent book: Here is a story of two men, each profoundly isolated, trying to figure out how to exist in a small, claustrophobic world.
The traveler heading home and dreading it is Cal, a young gay man who has recently graduated from college in Edinburgh and has been floundering ever since. At the start of the novel, he is summoned back to the small village where he grew up to care for his sick grandmother. He obliges, but he’s not happy about the move — a rakish dreamer, Cal doesn’t fit into the provincial life of his village. His chief antagonist is his father, John. Traditional, religious and stoic, John hates Cal’s flamboyance and inertia, and he’s determined to mold Cal into an upstanding citizen of this tiny community. But John is hiding secrets of his own that, if they were to get out, could upend his life.
Bouncing between John’s and Cal’s stories, “John of John” asks: What does it mean to fit in, what’s the risk of standing out, and what’s the price of both?
On this episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Leah Greenblatt and Scott Heller.
Other books (and a movie) mentioned in this episode:
“Shuggie Bain” and “Young Mungo,” by Douglas Stuart
“What We Can Know,” by Ian McEwan
“The Banshees of Inisherin,” directed by Martin McDonagh
“The Keeper,” by Tana French
“A Natural,” by Ross Raisin
“The Spell,” by Alan Hollinghurst
“Seascraper,” by Benjamin Wood
“Whale Fall,” by Elizabeth O’Connor
“Clear,” by Carys Davies
“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë
“Persuasion,” by Jane Austen
“Washington Square,” by Henry James
“The Town of Babylon,” by Alejandro Varela
“Memorial,” by Bryan Washington
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