The Booker Prize winner’s John of John takes place in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, where a native son returns after university and keeps his sexuality a secret.
What drew you to the Hebridean islands?
I grew up in Glasgow and never had the coin to explore my own country. But I think I’ve been accumulating cues. First, I studied textiles, and the islands’ sheep farmers are also weavers. Second, islands are isolated, and I’ve always been writing about loneliness. Right before Shuggie Bain came out, I rented a small croft house on the isle of Harris. I was unknown as a writer and wondering what I would do next. To manage my anxiety, I said to myself, I don’t know the rural parts of Scotland that well and I don’t know the islands at all, but I have a feeling that I want to write something about growing up working class and queer and living in a depopulated rural place.
How did your time on the island shape John of John, specifically its portrayal of the protagonist, Cal, who faces his homosexuality and a disapproving father?
Every settlement had spinsters and bachelors, and I would ask about them and people would say, oh, they missed their moment, or this woman never found love, or he was looking after his parents, or he went away with the Merchant Navy, or he just doesn’t like women. He likes his work and he likes God and he likes his friends. I would hear the same thing, that there were just people that didn’t marry, and I said just casually to a woman I was having lunch with that also some of them will naturally be gay. I started thinking about these men who lived as farmers and crofters and loved each other deeply but had never been able to take that step, and it wasn’t because they were faced with huge homophobia. It was just because it was so far outside the order of things. They believe very deeply in scripture. But it’s the most beautiful place on the planet. You can understand why they believe in God, because you are in the elements with nothing to separate you, so you can believe in something much bigger.
What about the women in the novel?
First of all, there was Ella, Cal’s grandmother, who was a joy to write, but they all act as the people who really understand the truth, unlike the men who are not saying what they feel. I wanted the women to act as the real moral fiber of the book but also the people who held the truth in the story. Despite that, they fall in their own way. Yet even though Grace, Cal’s mother, walked out on her child, we understand as readers why she did it. The community will never be able to forgive her, but she went on to prosper, and I needed Grace very much to not be broken by her decision—to be almost heroic.
