John of John by Douglas Stuart: book review (booker longlist)
Cal is summoned back to the island by his father, John, to take care of his ailing grandmother. Cal's out of money and finished with his degree, so he returns to the rural, Christian fundamentalist island he thought he'd finally escaped. At home, he tries to rebel with his long, bleached hair and secondhand clothes from the mainland, but he folds himself back into life on the island soon enough. His father has his own set of secrets that keep the two men on completely separate emotional islands within the same house. Cal's grandmother, Ella, is the glue between them, the one who thinks she knows all. But in their game of all trying to outsmart one another, hoping to find some shred of happiness, the wires get crossed.
This is my favorite of Stuart's books I read so far. He masterfully captures the island's atmosphere. The cold, blustering wind hitting the cliffs, the soaking rain, the endless land with a few dots of light uniting the neighbors on the ribbon road. The isolation soaks through to the bone of every character. You hear it in their voices that are rendered in close third person and in their actions. How do you forge a new path forward in a place everyone has forgotten, that has a population declining so quickly that they'll no longer have a church soon. Despite being set in the late '90s, they feel stuck much further back in time, where many of them fight desperately to stave off modernity, pop culture, technology, new clothes from chain stores. Staying close to what they've known and to the faith wears on them all even as it is the life they choose.
Stuart renders the unspoken drama beautifully, switching between Cal's perspective as this 22-year-old whose seen a bit more of the world, been able to live a different life, and then been hemmed back into the expectations of the island and John who has turned deeper and deeper into the faith, unwilling to open himself to the reality that times are changing and self-punishment is not the only answer. Cal and John are both gay, and neither of them can talk about it. This fundamental truth leads to an increasing number of knots on both their parts, a pervading confusion about how you're allowed to live and what you owe to yourself. John, it turns out, has a tender, decade-spanning secret relationship with a neighbor. Cal is just finding his feet, making all the mistakes you make at 22. They hold many of the answers they need between the two of them, but they're unable to cross that bridge, to have a closeness in their relationship, wrapped in their separate and dividing beliefs.
It is Ella that sees through them and tries to pull the strings to bring them closer together and closer to what they both need, but in a sort of Shakespearian way, she underestimates how much they both know of her machinations, and there are so many little tragedies that arise from John, Cal, and Ella each misjudging how much information the others hold and are manipulating in the background.
The trifecta between them in the house and the inclusion of a few key players from the road create quite the compelling, absorbing story. Stuart is great at extracting the weight of the silence and the stakes from every day life. It's when Stuart seems to get insecure about his ability to do this that the book veers off its course. I found the last 100 pages before the immediate ending to be a somewhat unnecessary series of detours—using death and other painful but almost cheap feeling plot twists involving minor characters. This drug the story away from its core themes in a way that detracted rather than adding complexity. These louder moments felt a little more unraveled, a bit like Stuart was chasing rather than driving the story. The quiet confidence, the sureness of hand, is what makes John of John so good, and I wish it hadn't taken on certain deviations that both made the book, which had been quite immersive and absorbing, start to drag.
Still, a worthy read, an escape to another time, in a very specific place. So much beautiful writing and a thought provoking read about parent-child relationships, about religion, about what it means to move forward and move on in life.
"'Some days I have to force myself to go out into the world.'
'I know, Dad,' he said. He held the wool to the window. It struggled in the breeze before he let go. 'But the world's not so bad."
Overall: 4
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