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John of John

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What to expect

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.

Critics Review

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
The Guardian
Stuart has cemented his status as a vital new voice for the working class
Independent
Douglas Stuart has a rare gift . . . A major literary talent
The Spectator
An enthralling writer
The Herald
Smart and sympathetic to everyone in its beautifully-realised world, John of John is literary fiction at its best.
The Telegraph
A tender yet fierce story of fathers and sons, secrets and silence, from the author of Shuggie Bain
Observer
It’s evocative, devastating and full of heart, with Stuart's signature way of making you want to read a single sentence again and again
Elle
A masterpiece. Every page is intimate and alive and offers tenderness with bruised knuckles. I finished it wrecked, in the best way. Cal, John, Innes and Doll will stay with me for a long time. This is Stuart at full stretch - I can't stop thinking about John of John
Jodie Harsh, author of You had To Be There
Proves Stuart is a first-class talent . . . An incredibly touching, surprising novel. You’ll have to be patient, though, it’s not published until May
Robbie Millen, The Sunday Times

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