Douglas Stuart returns to Scotland's edge with a novel of fathers, sons and island secrets

A young man returns home reluctantly, afraid, to the island of Harris at the far edge of Scotland. On the ferry back he is already asked to place himself in the island's web of lineage: who does he belong to. He answers that he is John, son of John, son of Iain, son of Iain the Weaver. According to Le Temps, this is John Calum Macleod, known as Cal, summoned by his father because the grandmother who raised him is said to be gravely ill.

Cal arrives still coming down from ecstasy, cold and soaked, in no state to face his father's disapproval of his long, badly bleached hair and secondhand clothes. He left to study and comes back, in his own eyes, a failure: a graduate with no job, in debt, lost, according to the paper's account.

This is Douglas Stuart's third novel, following the success of Shuggie Bain (2021) and Mungo (2023). Le Temps describes John, fils de John as a forceful account of island life — mutual surveillance, social control, secrets, but also mutual aid, attachment and belonging. The review notes the narrative carries real momentum, even if it loses its way somewhat in digressions toward the end.

Much of the book's pull, according to the review, comes from the rough landscape of the Outer Hebrides: storm-battered rock lit by sudden sunbursts that warm to the bone. Terse dialogue in Gaelic, meant to irritate a grandmother who pretends not to understand it, provides comic moments. The body is a constant presence — worked over by fishing and farm labour, aching, injured, soaked in drink, seeking touch — while the smells of wet sheep and dogs, old shoes, peat smoke and grilled cheese are said to linger through the book's decrepit farmhouses.