PrideReads

John of John

By Douglas Stuart

November 23, 2026 | 7:30PM | Tomorrow Bookstore

John of John is Douglas Stuart’s latest novel and was shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. It’s set on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides in the late 1990s and follows Cal MacLeod, a twenty-two year old art school graduate who comes home after four years in Edinburgh. His father, John, has told him that his grandmother Ella is gravely ill, but Ella turns out to be as sharp as ever, and Cal soon realizes he was called back for other reasons. John is a sheep farmer, weaver, and church deacon in a strict Presbyterian community. Cal doesn’t fit into any of it, with his dyed hair, his torn jeans, and the relationships with men he has kept hidden back in Edinburgh. Ella is a Glaswegian who refuses to speak Gaelic, and she stands between father and son, keeping a fragile peace as best she can. As the seasons turn, flashbacks bring long-buried family secrets to the surface and the island’s silences start to break. Stuart writes the Harris landscape with real tenderness, and his portrait of faith, shame, and queer longing hits as hard as anything he has written. John of John is a story about what we inherit from our fathers and what it costs to live a life no one is allowed to see.

PrideReads attendees get a 10% discount on John of John at Tomorrow Bookstore.