“His hands were rough, but the fingers were long and elegant as though God had granted them for a life he had never lived.”
“I’m not going to watch you torture yourself and then come round here expecting sympathy for it.”
When I reviewed Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain back in 2020, I wrote: “This novel is wrapped in bruise, and it smells like day old beer and stale smoke.” When I read Young Mungo in 2022, I wrote “the novel is carried, much like Shuggie, on a booze-soaked bruise that just keeps spreading.” Here we are in 2026, and I finally read John of John (Grove Press 2026). This novel is also a booze-soaked bruise, but an older one where the colors have bloomed. But for the ending, this may have beat out Shuggie as my favorite.
There have been a lot of reviews about John of John, and it’s doubtful that I can say anything new, but the tortured relationship between Cal and his father and the secrets they carry make this a hold your breath, can’t put it down, read. On top of broken but beautiful characters, you have just as jagged and beautiful a setting. Stuart has a remarkable way of putting the reader in a story such that you can smell the air, feel the dampness and the ache but also the beauty and the colors that are the Isle of Harris.
I didn’t care for the ending as I felt it did a disservice to both John and Cal, but mostly Cal. I also really disliked John by the end, and I’m not entirely sure I was supposed to. I can say that John and Cal are cut from the same cloth and Stuart not only writes them that way and even made it clear via the title, he has numerous characters remark on it almost to the point of being too much.
I didn’t really like Young Mungo – I felt it was cobbled together from Shuggie’s cutting room floor. John of John does not have that issue, and while there are some similarities between Cal and Shuggie, this is an entirely different bruise – and man, the colors will blow you away.
A Girl Named Tommi 