Favorite of 2026: John of John

With 3 months’ distance, JOHN of JOHN by Douglas Stuart is still my favorite book of the year, and of the decade. Extraordinary work.

I devoured it in a week, a land speed record for me—especially in the throes of a tight editing deadline. This gave me the juice, and the joy, inhabiting the Outer Hebrides. I was thoroughly transported there. With Cal. If this book went on for a thousand pages, I would want to spend them with Cal.

A gay art school graduate returning home—the picture that just created for you is probably light years from Cal and I never met a character like him, nor his father or grandmother or most of the local crofters, who slowly reveal richer selves. The characterization and intimacy are virtuoso.

One of my readers on FB put it perfectly, "His attention to behavioral details, a shifting glance…"

* I spent a college summer working at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, running with a group of Glaswegians, which is half a world renewed from Harris, but these characters felt every bit Scottish to me. And the language was music to my ears.

The prose is so glorious that I felt shitty about my own in the pages I was editing at the same time. My editor slapped some sense in me, because my voice is nothing like that, but I wish I could write like this. I’m envious. But I’ll be happy a happy man if I can write a book that makes my soul feel this full.