With JOHN OF JOHN, the author of SHUGGIE BAIN and YOUNG MUNGO sets the scene in Scotland, but not the Glasgow of his previous books. Instead, Douglas Stuart's protagonist, John-Calum (Cal), the first Macleod to leave the Isle of Harris for university on the mainland, returns home with his apparently useless textile degree and a pile of debt.

The Isle of Harris may be only 300 miles from Edinburgh, but with its strict Presbyterian ethic, sparse population and old-fashioned weaving industry, it seems worlds away. Cal arrives in thrift-store clothes with long, dyed-blond hair stuffed up under his cap. His father is not amused. John Senior serves in his dwindling church parish as the cantor, his life a living tribute to and sacrifice for his ardent faith and disappearing way of life.

"The plot is woven as tightly as the cloth that father and son produce on the loom.... [Stuart] brings his troubled characters to life in an intriguing and hauntingly beautiful setting. Both tragic and comic, JOHN OF JOHN is well worth reading."

Cal tells himself that he has come back because of his grandmother’s deteriorating health, but in reality he is tired of being broke and sleeping on friends’ couches in the city. He does love his father and sassy granny, but he thinks he knows what would happen if he came out as gay to them. So he doesn’t. One of his childhood friends, Isla Macdonald, goes away to college and comes back pregnant --- a source of deep shame for her family. The elders of the church try to convince Cal to marry Isla. Even Granny Ella has a say: “‘The point is, we’ve all been lumped to raise weans that were not ours.’ Ella rifled through her bag and dropped a mint into his palm. ‘Isla’s a nice lassie. And I’ve washed enough socks to know you’re hard up for company.’”

But Cal is more interested in Isla’s brother, Doll, his old friend and sexual partner who is drinking himself to death. He puts off visiting his mother, Grace, who left his father when he was 10 and has had more children with John’s brother (Cal’s uncle). Naturally, John Senior has not spoken to Grace since she left. These folks are champion grudge holders. John’s special friend, Innes MacInnes, has lived for 30 years in a house with his own brother with not a word passing between them.

Like many compelling novels, the setting of JOHN OF JOHN is as much a character as the people (and the ewe who informs Ella of the goings-on around the island). The Macleods and most of their neighbors are crofters, renting their land from faraway landlords, with little hope of ever owning their homes outright. They cobble together a living raising sheep or fishing; weaving cloth to order on human-powered looms; and digging peat to heat their homes.

I had to google some things as they were mentioned but not explained. For instance, what is a blackhouse as opposed to a whitehouse? (Blackhouses were double-walled dwellings where humans and animals lived together. Whitehouses were built later and featured a wall to separate the byre from the humans.) Gaelic is sprinkled throughout the text and used as a weapon by John to exclude Ella, who came to the island as a young adult and never learned the language (or so John thinks): “His choice to speak Gaelic was often territorial, designed to mark some part of Cal as his and his alone.”

It was difficult at times to relate to these characters, except maybe Ella, yet I was still deeply curious about what happens to them. The plot is woven as tightly as the cloth that father and son produce on the loom. Stuart writes skillfully about tenuous family bonds: “He thought about the life that he had tied himself to so that Cal had something to tie himself to, and now that Cal didn’t want it, he realized that he hadn’t wanted it either.” He brings his troubled characters to life in an intriguing and hauntingly beautiful setting. Both tragic and comic, JOHN OF JOHN is well worth reading.